mi 


>■-;, 


L  I  B  R  ^  Ti  Y 

(IK     IIIK 

Theological    Seminary 

PRINCETON,  N.  J. 
BK  115  .C8  S44  1876 


('as 


Shairp,  John  Campbell,  isi 


1885. 


""I'^'f      Culture  and  relink 


i 


CULTURE  AND   RELIGION. 


CULTURE  AND  RELIGION 


IN   SOME   OF   THEIR   RELATIONS. 


J.   C.^SHAIRP, 

PIUNCIPAL  OP  THE  UNITED  COLLEGE  OP  ST.  SALVATOB  AND   SX    LSONARD, 
ST.   ANDREWS. 


[Reprinted  from  the  Edinburgh  Edition.] 


NEW    YORK: 

PUBLISHED   BY  KURD    AND   HOUGHTON. 

1876 


RIVERSIDE,    CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED     AND     PRINTED      BY 

H.   O.   HOUGHTON  AND   COMPANY 


PREFACE  TO   THIRD   EDITION. 


When  I  first  sent  these  Lectures  to  the 
press  I  had  no  expectation  that  they  would 
awaken  so  much  interest  as  they  seem  to 
have  done.  This  interest,  I  know,  is  mainly 
due  to  their  attempting  to  deal  A^dth  what 
an  honored  correspondent  calls  "  the  sub- 
ject of  the  day."  Still  I  am  not  insensible 
to  the  kind  way  in  which  they  have  been 
noticed  in  many  pubhc  prints  —  not  to  men- 
tion approvals  of  private  persons,  worthy  of 
all  regard.  Valuable  such  testimonies  are, 
when  sincerely  and  spontaneously  given.  It 
is  something  more  to  have  learnt  that  there 
are  young  men,  here  and  there,  who,  need- 
ing help,  have  thought  they  found  some  in 
this  small  book. 

Though  the  pubhc  criticisms  passed  on  it 
have  been,  in  the  main,  commendatory,  per- 
haps beyond  its  desert,  one  or  two  objections 


6h  PREFACE   TO    THIRD  EDITION. 

have  been  urged  against  it,  on  which  I 
should  wish  to  say  a  word ;  for  these,  if 
made  in  a  fair  spirit,  are  always  suggestive. 
A  vtriter  in  the  last  number  of  the  "  North 
British  Review  "  (alas  !  that  it  should  have 
been  the  last)  charges  me  with  having  mis- 
represented Professor  Huxley.  And  in  proof 
of  this  charge  he  quotes  from  some  other 
portion  of  that  eminent  writer's  works,  words 
which  seem  to  modify,  if  not  contradict,  the 
view  I  have  given  of  his  opinions.  In  an- 
swer, I  have  to  say  that  my  second  lecture 
—  the  one  which  deals  with  Professor  Hux- 
ley's theory  —  was  delivered,  and,  if  I  mis- 
take not,  pubHshed,  before  the  fuller  expo- 
sition of  his  views  contained  in  his  "Lay 
Sermons  "  was  given  to  the  world.  I  had  be- 
fore me  but  one  isolated  lecture  by  Professor 
Huxley  which  had  appeared  in  "  Macmil- 
lan's  Magazine."  This,  and  this  only,  I  pro- 
fessed to  examine ;  and  I  submit  that  the  ac- 
count I  have  given  of  that  lecture  is  a  fair 
representation  of  it,  and  no  distortion.  If 
the  author  has  by  other  writings  modified  the 
view  set  forth  in  the  lecture  which  I  criti- 
cised —  this  is  just  what  might  be  expected, 


PREFACE    TO    THIRD  EDITION.  6c 

when  a  writer  of  so  wide  and  varied  ability, 
combining  in  so  rare  measure  metaphysical 
with  physical  knowledge,  came  to  reflect  on 
the  other  sides  of  the  large  problem,  which 
the  lecture  in  question  had  settled  in  too 
exclusive  and  peremptory  a  way.  But  with 
these  other  writings  I  was  not  concerned, 
even  had  they  been,  when  I  wrote,  accessi- 
ble. I  should  certainly  greatly  regret  and 
try  to  amend  what  I  have  written,  if  it  could 
be  shown  that  I  have  done  injustice  to  that 
one  portion  which  alone  I  professed  to  ex- 
amine. 

The  writer  in  the  "  North  British  "  says 
that  it  is  not  fair  to  treat  Professor  Huxley 
as  a  MateriaUst.  I  am  not  aware  that  I  have 
done  so.  Indeed,  I  never  attempted  to  set- 
tle under  what  "  ism  "  he  should  be  ranked, 
because  I  cannot  see  that  such  modes  of  clas- 
sifying men  in  any  way  forward  the  ends  of 
candid  inquiry.  And  had  I  wished  to  clas- 
sify him  in  such  a  way,  I  had  not  the  means 
of  determining  what  class  he  belonged  to. 

A  Saturday  Reviewer  takes  the  same  ob- 
jection as  the  writer  in  the  "  North  British." 
Here,  again,  my  reply  is,  that  I  was  exam- 


66?         .  PREFACE  TO   THIRD  EDITION. 

ining  one  lecture,  not  the  whole  works  of 
Professor  Huxley,  and  that  in  my  examina- 
tion I  have  given  a  fair  account  of  all  I  at- 
tempt to  deal  with.  I  desire  to  repeat  that 
I  have  not  called,  and  had  no  right  to  call 
Professor  Huxley  a  Materiahst. 

The  Saturday  Reviewer  further  charges 
me  with  want  of  clearness  in  my  conception 
of  the  scope  and  aims  both  of  Culture  and 
Religion,  —  with  confounding  rather  than 
discriminating  their  relative  spheres.  It 
may  be  that  my  views  on  this  matter  are 
not  so  clear  as  they  might  be,  or  at  least  not 
so  clearly  brought  out,  but  I  must  confess 
that  two  or  three  careful  perusals  of  the  Re- 
viewer's somewhat  lengthy  remarks  have 
not  made  my  views  any  clearer.  As  I  have 
looked  in  vain  for  some  newer  light  from 
the  remarks  both  of  the  North  British  and 
the  Saturday  Reviewer,  I  feel  constrained 
to  abide  by  the  definitions  and  distinctions 
of  Culture  and  Rehgion  which  I  have  given 
in  my  lectures  until  a  better  expositor  ap- 
pears. 

Both  these  writers  agree  in  the  remark 
that  Culture  is  a  religion  for  this  world,  and 


PREFACE   TO    THIRD  EDITION.  6« 

Religion  a  culture  for  the  next.  This  is  one 
of  those  gnomes  which  sound  wise,  but  are 
really  hollow.  Even  if  this  world  were  all, 
there  are  many,  and  these  the  liighest  and 
lovehest  things,  which  Culture  without  Re- 
ligion could  never  engender.  Purity,  disin- 
terestedness, reverence,  —  these,  the  finest 
fruits  of  the  Spirit,  could  not  come  to  full 
maturity  in  any  soul  but  one  which  lived 
habitually  as  in  the  Divine  presence,  and 
under  the  power  of  the  world  to  come.  And 
are  not  these  the  qualities  which  are  needed, 
not  only  to  fit  a  man  for  the  next  world,  but 
even  to  make  him  all  that  it  is  best  to  be 
even  in  this  world  ?  If  this  is  so  —  if  man 
cannot  be  what  he  ought  to  be,  even  for 
this,  without  taking  account  of  a  future 
life,  —  does  not  this  prove  that  all  attempts 
to  divide  these  two  by  any  sharp  demarca- 
tion are  futile?  And  is  there  not  here  a 
strong  argument  for  the  reality  of  a  future 
life,  when  we  find  that  the  best  cannot  be 
attained  in  this  life  if  we  lose  faith  in  that 
other  ?  The  highest  qualities  of  the  human 
Boul  cannot  be  based  on  a  behef  which  is  a 
delusion. 


6/  PREFACE  TO   THIRD  EDITION. 

In  the  fourth  lecture  something  has  been 
said  on  the  difficulty  which  the  trained  log- 
ical mtellect,  used  to  form  clear,  distinct 
notions  of  things,  finds  in  reconciling  it- 
seK  to  the  dimness  and  indistinctness  that 
necessarily  belongs  to  the  deepest  rehgious 
ideas.  To  know  our  own  ignorance,  both 
that  which  comes  from  our  individual  weak- 
nesses, and  that  arising  from  the  necessary 
limits  of  human  thought,  is  a  very  whole- 
some knowledge.  It  may  no  doubt  be  used 
as  an  argument  to  stifle  honest  search  and 
to  cover  mental  indolence.  Forgetfulness  of 
it,  on  the  other  hand,  leads  to  at  least  as 
great  evils  of  an  opposite  kind,  —  self-con- 
ceit, shallowness,  irreverence.  And  it  is  to 
this  side  that  the  pendulum  swings  at  pres- 
ent. Amid  man's  triumphant  achievements 
in  the  world  of  sense,  there  is  at  present 
little  feeling  of  man's  necessary  ignorance 
with  regard  to  the  things  that  far  more 
nearly  concern  him  —  little  of  the  fruits 
which  naturally  accompany  such  a  feeling — 
''humiUty,  sobriety,  resignation."  In  the 
Bo-called  intellectual  world,  such  qualities 
are  regarded  as  belonging  to  a  bygone  age, 


PREFACE   TO    THIRD  EDITION.  Qg 

fit  only  for  old  women  and  children.  "  Man 
the  measure  of  all  things  "  seems  the  motto 
of  modern  thought,  as  truly  as  ever  it  was 
of  old  Protagoras.  And  so  we  see  many 
applying  this  measure  to  all  subjects,  and  as 
though  they  had  dropped  their  plumb-line 
to  the  bottom  of  the  universe,  denying  that 
it  has  anywhere  a  place  for  Miracle.  In 
the  moral  and  rehgious  sphere  of  things 
the  same  tendency  is  everywhere  apparent. 
Men,  making  themselves,  their  own  feelings, 
needs,  aspirations,  intuitions  the  centre,  by 
these  proceed  to  measure  the  nature  of  God, 
his  deaUngs  with  man,  his  revelation  of 
Himself.  Hence  it  quickly  comes  that  what- 
ever does  not  fit  into  our  nature,  whatever 
truth  of  Revelation,  or  even  of  Natural  Re- 
ligion, does  not  make  a  direct  appeal  to  our 
understanding,  feelings,  or  conscience,  and 
produce  some  manifest  effect  on  these,  is 
discarded.  All  mystery  is  rejected ;  what- 
ever seems  to  us  isolated,  disjointed,  or  in- 
explicable is  pared  away ;  and  all  relig- 
ious truth  is  rounded  off  into  an  intelligible 
fiystem,  of  which  man  and  his  needs  are  the 
interpreting  key.     Tried  by  this  measure,  it 


8^  PREFACE   TO   THIRD  EDITION. 

may  be  doubted  whether  even  the  truths  of 
so-called  Natural  Religion  would  remain. 
For  our  best  notions  of  right  and  wrong, 
even  our  finest  feelings,  are  as  inadequate  to 
explain  the  facts  of  God's  Providence  which 
we  see,  as  they  are  to  measure  the  greatest 
mysteries  of  Revelation  which  we  do  not 
see.  He  who  in  religious  things  desires  to 
think  truly,  .not  to  say  reverently,  cannot 
too  soon  learn  that  he  must  be  content  to 
see  in  part  and  to  know  in  part,  —  to  find  a 
true  link  here,  and  another  there,  but  must 
not  expect  in  this  life  to  comiect  them  into 
one  completed  chain.  This  is  a  very  old 
truth,  so  old  that  it  sounds  a  commonplace. 
It  is  not  the  less  a  truth  which  some  of  the 
voices  loudest  at  the  present  hour  are  doing 
their  best  to  preach  down.  So  ineradicable, 
however,  is  it  m  the  nature  of  thmgs,  that, 
though  forgotten,  it  cannot  be  destroyed, 
and  must  soon  or  late  reassert  itself. 

Nothing  said  in  these  Lectures  is  intended 
to  deny,  that  it  is  well  that  the  whole  fron- 
tier where  rehgious  beUef  meets  with  the 
methods  and  results  of  science,  and  with  the 
results  of   criticism,  should   be  resurveyed, 


PREFACE   TO   THIRD  EDITION.  6« 

and,  where  there  is  need,  readjusted.  It 
cannot,  however,  be  that  the  essence  of  oui 
religion  must,  as  some  speak,  be  remoulded 
and  reconstructed  at  the  bidding  of  these 
modern  methods. 

To  hear  some  speak,  it  would  seem  as  if 
the  time  had  come  when  the  God  in  whom 
Christians  have  hitherto  believed  must  now 
give  place  to  a  system  of  laws,  or  to  one 
great  universal  Law,  and  Christ  Himself  to 
some  subhmated  essence  of  morality.  As 
one  reads  or  hears  such  things  there  comes 
to  mind  the  words  read  long  ago,  which  Ne- 
ander  quoted  from  the  letters  of  Niebuhr, 
"  Again  and  again  have  I  said  that  I  know 
not  what  to  do  with  a  metaphysical  God ; 
and  that  I  vdll  have  no  other  but  •  the  God 
of  the  Bible,  who  is  heart  to  heart.  Who- 
ever can  reconcile  the  metaphysical  God  with 
the  God  of  the  Bible  may  try  it ;  but  he  who 
admits  the  absolute  inexplicabihty  of  the 
main  point,  which  can  only  be  approached 
by  asymptotes,  will  never  grieve  at  the  im- 
possibiHty  of  possessing  any  system  of  rehg- 
ion," — words  more  needed  in  this  country 
now  than  when  they  first  appeared  more 
than  thirty  years  since. 


6y  PREFACE    TO    THIRD  EDITION. 

Perhaps  the  main  point  which  these  Lec- 
tures have  tried  to  show  may  be  said  to  be 
this,  —  that  in  forming  a  true  judgment  on 
rehgious  subjects,  it  is  before  all  things  nec- 
essary that  a  man  be  in  some  real  measure 
religious.  Whatever  other  knowledge  may 
be  or  may  not  be  present,  this  one  must  be, 
if  the  judgment  formed  is  to  be  worth  any- 
thing. The  absence  of  this  requirement  in 
a  man  renders  his  religious  judgments  of  no 
account,  however  great  his  powers  and  how- 
ever large  his  knowledge. 

It  may  perhaps  be  said  this  is  a  vicious 
circle.  To  form  true  religious  judgments, 
you  say  a  man  must  first  be  religious.  But 
before  he  can  be  religious,  must  he  not  first 
have  found  right  religious  beliefs  ?  And 
this  implies  patient  inquiry  and  laborious 
thought.  But  all  who  are  used  to  moral 
inquiries  know  that  the  occurrence  of  such 
seemingly  vicious  circles  is  no  strange  thing 
in  that  region  of  thought.  Aristotle  said, 
To  form  virtuous  habits  you  must  first  per- 
form wtuous  actions  ;  and  yet  he  also  held 
that  in  order  to  do  a  virtuous  act  you  nuist 
be  abeady  in  the  same  degree  virtuous. 


PREFACE   TO   THIRD  EDITION.  6ife 

It  is  then  true  that  the  man  who  would 
think  truly  on  spiritual  things  must  first  be 
spiritually-minded.  And  to  be  so,  to  rise 
above  the  absorption  in  things  seen,  the 
tyranny  of  the  world's  ways,  and  the  heart's 
natural  averseness  to  seK-denying  godliness, 
this  is  not  easy.  If  it  takes  much  and  long 
labor  for  a  man  to  be  a  good  physicist,  or 
critic,  or  philosopher,  it  surely  requires  not 
less,  though  a  different  kind  of  endeavor,  to 
become  really  Christian  in  aim  and  spirit. 
But  to  hear  many  speak  it  would  seem  as  if 
to  be  a  philosopher  or  critic  was  the  hard 
thing,  to  be  the  Christian  was  easy  and  nat- 
ural, and  came,  as  it  were,  by  instinct.  As 
against  this  common  view,  and  at  the  risk 
of  being  accused  of  sermonizing,  it  must  be 
said,  that  he  who  would  attain  to  religious 
truth  and  Ufe  must  be  prepared  for  much 
severer  and  more  continued  effort  in  the 
spiritual,  than  this  world's  learning  demands 
in  the  intellectual  region.  Men  of  learning 
and  study  are  forever  tempted  to  begin  at 
the  intellectual  side  of  things,  and  from  that 
to  try  to  work  their  way  to  the  possession  of 
full-formed  Christian   convictions.     It  is  a 


6Z  PREFACE  TO   THIRD  EDITION. 

vain  dream,  though,  perhaps,  nothing  but 
trial  and  faihire  will  convince  most  men  that 
it  is  so. 

But  when  all  has  been  thought  and  said, 
this  is  the  issue  to  which  it  comes.  Are  we 
to  make  modern  thought  and  feeling  our 
fixed  standard,  and  to  pare  down  the  words 
of  Christ  and  his  Apostles  to  fit  into  this  ? 
Or  are  we  to  make  Christ's  words,  and  those 
of  his  Apostles,  spiritually  apprehended,  our 
centre  and  standard,  and  in  the  Hght  of  these 
to  look  at  all  things,  by  these  to  try  the 
modern  world,  and  all  its  ways  ?  There  axe 
but  these  two  alternatives,  and  one  cannot 
doubt  which  of  them  the  true  Christian  will 
choose. 

St.  Andrews,  Uth  February,  1872. 


a 


PEEFAOE. 


This  little  book  is  a  small  contribution  to 
great  subject.  The  five  Lectures  which  it 
contains  were  delivered,  on  five  successive 
Saturdays  of  last  Winter  Session,  to  as  many 
of  the  Students  of  the  United  College  and 
others  as  chose  to  attend.  They  were  orig- 
inally written  with  a  view  solely  to  immedi- 
ate delivery.  The  publication  of  them  is  an 
afterthought.  It  is  needless  to  explain  my 
reasons  for  publishing  them,  for  these  could 
neither  increase  nor  diminish  their  value, 
whatever  that  may  be.  One  object,  how- 
ever, which  I  hope  may  be  gained  by  publi- 
cation is  to  place  them  in  a  permanent  form 
before  those  for  whom  they  were  originally 
intended.  As  lectures,  meant  to  be  under- 
stood on  first  hearing,  they  are  naturally  in 
a  style  more  popular  and  diffuse  than  might 
have  beseemed  a  regular  treatise.     They  are 


VIU  PREFACE. 

printed  almost  as  they  were  spoken.,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Fifth  Lecture,  to  which 
some  passages  have  been  added. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  no  attempt  is 
here  made  at  systematic,  much  less  at  ex 
haustive,  treatment  of  the  subject.  To  have 
aimed  at  this  within  the  space  and  in  the 
form  to  which  I  have  restricted  myself, 
would  have  been  impossible.  All  I  have 
wished  to  do  is  to  set  forth  certain  views, 
which  seem  to  me  true  in  themselves,  and 
yet  likely  to  be  passed  over  too  lightly,  or 
set  aside  too  summarily,  by  the  intellectual 
temper  of  the  time.  No  satisfactory  adjust- 
ment of  the  questions  here  entertained  can, 
I  believe,  be  reached  without  assio-nino;  to  the 
spiritual  side  of  man's  being  and  of  truth  a 
prominence  and  an  importance,  which  do  not 
seem  to  have  entered  into  the  thoughts  of 
some  of  the  ablest  advocates  of  Culture. 
Indeed,  to  many,  and  these  not  the  most  fool- 
ish of  mankind.  Culture  seems  then  only  to 
be  worthy  of  serious  regard  when  it  minis- 
ters to  faith,  —  when  it  enables  men  to  see 
spiritual  things  more  truly  and  deeply.  If 
it  obstructs  or  dims  the  vision  of  these  things, 


PREFA  CE.  It 

as  sometimes  it  does,  it  then  ceases  to  have 
for  them  any  value. 

In  handling  subjects  on  which  all  men 
have  some  thoughts,  it  is  impossible  exactly 
to  determine  where  one's  own  end  and  those 
of  others  begin.  Where,  however,  I  have 
been  aware  that  any  thought  or  expression 
of  thought  has  been  suggested  to  me  by  an- 
other writer,  I  have  tried  to  acknowlege  it, 
either  by  quoting  in  the  text  some  of  the 
author's  Avords,  or  by  giving  a  quotation  from 
his  works  in  the  Notes.  Of  tlie  passages 
printed  in  the  Appendix,  some  were  directly 
suffffestive  of  the  thought  in  the  text,  others 
are  merely  adduced  as  confirmations  of  it. 
It  would  have  been  easy  to  have  increased 
the  number  of  the  Notes,  but  they  were 
drawn  out  at  a  place  remote  from  libraries, 
and  were  taken  only  from  those  books  which 
happened  to  be  at  hand.        J.  C.  Shairp. 

September  1, 1870. 


CONTEH'TS. 


PAOI 

I.    The  Aim.  of  Culture  —  its  Relation  to  Re- 
ligion         13 

II.  The  Scientific  Theory  of  Culture      .       .  45 

III.  The  Literary  Theory  of  Culture  .  .  74 
[V.  Hindrances  to  Spiritual  Growth  .  .  104 
V     Religion  combining  Culture  with  Itself   .  133 


Notes 179 


CULTUEE  A^D  EELIGIOK 


LECTURE  I. 

THE    AIM    OF     CULTURE  —  ITS    RELATION     TO     RB« 
LIGION. 

When  one  is  called,  following  the  prac- 
tice of  former  Principals,  to  lecture  to  the 
students  of  this  College  on  some  branch  of 
thought  or  knowledge,  and  when,  with  a 
single  restriction,  it  is  left  undefined  what 
the  subject  shall  be,  the  selection  might  nat- 
urally be  supposed  to  give  rise  to  some  em- 
barrassment. But  two  conditions  are  at 
hand  to  restrict  and  determine  the  lecturer's 
choice.  One  is,  that  he  must  choose  some 
subject  with  which  his  past  studies  or  ex- 
perience have  made  him  in  some  degree 
familiar ;  the  other  is,  that  the  subject  should 
be  such  as  he  may  reasonably  hope  will 
either  interest  or  benefit  his  hearers,  —  if 
possible,  do  both. 

It  seemed  to  me  not  unfitting  that,  on  this 


14  THE  AIM  OF   CULTURE. 

first  occasion  of  my  lecturing  to  you  in  a  new 
capacity,  I  should  speak  on  some  subject  of 
wide  and  general  interest,  which  commands 
a  view,  not  so  much  of  any  one  department 
of  study,  as  of  the  last  and  highest  ends  of 
all  study. 

Other  opportunities  may  be  given  for  tak- 
ing up  some  one  definite  subject,  historical  or 
other,  and  dealing  with  it  in  detail. 

For  this  year  I  shall  be  well  content  if, 
without  pretending  to  overtake,  much  less 
exhaust,  the  wide  subject  which  I  bring  be- 
fore you,  I  shall  be  enabled  to  offer  a  few 
suggestions,  which  may  be  of  use  to  some 
who  hear  me,  on  matters  which  veiy  nearly 
concern  them.  The  questions  I  shall  have 
to  touch  on  might  easily  be  made  to  land  us 
in  the  most  abstract  and  speculative  investi- 
gations. It  shall,  however,  be  my  endeavor, 
as  far  as  possible,  to  keep  clear  of  these,  and 
to  put  what  I  have  to  say  in  a  concrete  and 
practical  shape.  This  I  shall  do  both  for 
other  reasons,  and  especially  from  the  convic- 
tion that  we  in  Scotland,  by  getting  hold  of 
all  subjects  by  the  metaphysical  end  of  them, 
often  contrive  to  squeeze  out  of  them  what- 
ever vital  sap  they  contain. 

The  question  what  it  is  we  aim  at  in  men- 


ITS  RELATION   TO  RELIGION.  15 

tal  cultivation,  and  what  relation  this  latter 
bears  to  religion,  cannot  be  said  to  be  out  of 
place  here  ;  for  in  considering  these  ques- 
tions we  are  brought  to  contemplate  steadily 
what  is  the  end  of  university  life,  and  in 
what  relation  university  life  stands  to  the 
ultimate  ends  of  life  taken  as  a  whole.  If  a 
University  like  this  exists  for  any  purpose,  I 
suppose  it  is  to  promote  mental  culture,  that 
is,  the  cultivation  not  merely  of  certain  tech- 
nical and  professional  faculties,  but,  over  and 
above  these,  of  the  whole  man.  A  few  years 
ago  there  would  have  been  no  need  to  utter 
a  truism  like  this  ;  but  we  live  at  present  in 
a  time  of  intellectual  revulsions.  What  were 
till  lately  held  to  be  first  principles  are  now 
from  time  to  time  made  the  butts  for  edu- 
cational reactionists  to  jeer  at.  We  have 
lately  heard  it  asserted  by  men  speaking 
with  some  authority  that  universities  and  all 
other  places  of  education  exist  for  one  pur- 
pose only,  —  to  train  men  for  their  special 
crafts  or  trades.  If  they  do  this  well,  they 
are  useful ;  if  they  do  not,  they  are  good  for 
nothing.  The  belief  in  any  ulterior  end  be- 
yond this  is  denied  and  ridiculed.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  the  utilitarian  logic  of  Mr.  Lowe, 
and  the  more  humorous  banter  of  our  pres- 


16  THE  AIM  OF   CULTURE. 

ent  Lord    Rector,   I  must  still  believe  that, 
above   and  beyond  special  professional  train- 
j  ing,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  mental  culture 
f  and  enlargement,  and  that  this  is  an   excel- 
\  lent  gift  in  itself,  apart  from  any  gain  it  may 
bring,  and  that  it  is  one  main  end  of  uni- 
versities to  foster  the  desire  and  further  the 
attainment  of  it.     The  man,  I  must  still  hold, 
is  more  than  his  trade.     The  spirit  that  is  in 
each  man  craves  other  nourishment  than  the 
bread  he  wins. 

I  do  not,  in  saying  this,  forget  that  we 
have  each  our  special  work  in  the  world  to 
do,  —  as  lawyers,  physicians,  teachers,  minis- 
ters, and  the  like,  —  and  that  it  tasks  all  our 
streno;th  and  knowledo;e  to  do  it.  All  men, 
or  almost  all,  are  bound  to  throw  themselves 
vigorously  into  some  one  of  the  known  pro- 
fessions, and  this  not  for  food  and  raiment 
only,  but  as  a  necessary  part  of  their  moral 
discipline.  Few,  very  few,  there  are  who, 
even  if  their  circumstances  admit  it,  can  dis- 
pense with  the  wholesome  yoke  of  a  profes- 
sion, and  yet  live  to  any  good  purpose.  But 
while  fully  acknowledging  not  only  the  ne- 
cessity, but  the  advantage  of  being  harnessed 
to  some  regular  profession,  and  that  to  suc- 
ceed in  this  the  finest  edge  of  faculty  and 


ITS   RELATION    TO  RELIGION.  17 

the  most  accurate  technical  training  must  be 
soucrht,  I  still  believe  there  is  something 
more  than  this,  and  greater,  which  must 
never  be  lost  sight  of,  if  we  desire  to  become 
not  mere  useful  machines  or  instruments,  but 
complete  men.  The  professional  man  who, 
over  and  above  his  daily  duties  and  business 
relations,  has  learned  to  feel  that  he  has 
other  relations,  wider  and  more  permanent, 
with  all  his  fellow-beings  in  all  ages,  —  that 
he  is  a  debtor  for  all  he  has  and  is  to  a  wider 
circle  of  things  than  that  he  outwardly  comes 
in  contact  with,  —  that  he  is  an  heir  of  all 
the  great  and  good  who  have  lived  before 
him,  — is  not  on  that  account  a  worse  Avork- 
man,  and  is  certainly  a  higher  and  better 
man. 

It  is  not,  then,  a  mere  dream,  but  a  very 
real  aim,  which  they  propose  who  urge  us  to 
seek  "  a  fuller,  more  harmonious  develop- 
ment of  our  humanity,  greater  freedom  from 
narrowness  and  prejudice,  more  width  of 
thought,  more  expansive  sympathies,  feelings 
more  catholic  and  humane,  a  high  and  un- 
selfish ideal  of  life."  These  are  the  quali- 
ties which  university  training,  if  it  had  its 
perfect  work,  might  be  expected  to  generate 
and  foster.     And   it  does  this  by  bringing 


18  THE  AIM  OF   CULTURE. 

young  minds,  while  they  are  still  plastic,  into 
contact  with  whatever  is  best  in  the  past  his- 
tory of  the  race,  —  with  the  great  deeds,  the 
high  thoughts,  the  beautiful  creations  which 
the  best  men  of  former  times  have  be- 
queathed to  us.  To  learn  to  know  and  sym- 
pathize with  these  is  the  work  not  of  one  or 
two  years,  but  of  our  whole  lives.  Yet  the 
process  may  be  said  to  begin  here,  and  in  a 
special  way  to  belong  to  the  university.  For 
here,  if  anywhere,  it  is  that  the  avenues  are 
first  opened  up  which  lead  to  the  great  store- 
house of  foregone  humanities,  —  here  that 
our  apprehension  of  these  things  is  first 
awakened.  But  a  small  portion  of  all  this 
richness  we  can  take  in  durino^  our  short 
university  course,  —  not  much,  it  may  be,  in 
a  whole  life-time.  But  it  is  something  to 
have  come  to  know  and  feel  that  these 
things  exist,  —  exist,  too,  for  us,  in  as  far  as 
we  can  appropriate  them,  and  to  have  had 
our  thoucrhts  and  desires  directed  thitherward. 
When  the  perception  of  these  things  and  the 
love  of  them  have  been  evoked,  culture  has 
begun,  and  the  university  life  is  the  natural 
time  for  it.  If  this  desire  does  .not  begin 
here,  it  is  not  often  awakened  afterwards. 
But  what  do  we  mean  by  this  fine  word 


ITS  RELATION  TO  RELIGION.  IS 

Culture,  so  much  in  vogue  at  present? 
What  the  Greeks  naturally  expressed  by 
their  TraiSeta,  the  Romans  by  their  humanitas^ 
we  less  happily  try  to  express  by  the  more 
artificial  word  Culture.  The  use  of  it  in  its 
present  sense  is,  as  far  as  I  know,  recent  in 
our  language,  forced  upon  us,  I  suppose,  by 
the  German  talk  about  '-Bildung."  And  the 
shifts  we  have  been  put  to,  to  render  that 
German  word,  seem  to  show  that  the  thing 
is  with  us  something  of  an  exotic,  rather  than 
native  to  the  soil.  When  applied  to  the  hu- 
man being,  it  means,  I  suppose,  the  ''educ- 
ing or  drawing  forth  all  that  is  potentially  in 
a  man,'*  the  training  all  the  energies  and  ca- 
pacities of  his  being  to  the  highest  pitch,  and 
directino;  them  to  their  true  ends.  The 
means  that  it  employs  to  attain  these  ends  are 
manifold  and  various,  as  manifold  as  are  the 
experiences  of  life.  But  one  of  the  most  pow- 
erful and  characteristic  instruments  of  culture 
is,  as  I  have  said,  to  bring  young  and  plastic 
minds  into  contact  with  all  that  is  best  and 
greatest  in  the  thoughts,  the  sentiments,  the 
deeds  of  past  generations  of  men,  in  order 
that  these  may  melt  into  them  and  mould  the 
character.  But  culture  is  not  a  product  of 
mere  study.      Learning   may   be   got  from 


20  THE  AIM  OF  CULTURE. 

books,  but  not  culture.  It  is  a  more  living 
process,  and  requires  that  the  student  shall  at 
times  close  his  books,  leave  his  solitary  room, 
and  mincrle  with  his  fellow-men.  He  must 
seek  the  intercourse  of  living  hearts  as  well 
as  of  dead  books,  —  especially  the  companion- 
ship of  those  of  his  own  contemporaries  whose 
minds  and  characters  are  fitted  to  instruct, 
elevate,  and  sweeten  his  own.  Another 
thing  required  is  the  discipline  which  must 
be  carried  on  by  each  man  in  himself,  the 
learning  of  self-control,  the  forming  of  habits, 
the  effort  to  overcome  what  is  evil  and  to 
strengthen  what  is  good  in  his  own  nature. 
But  to  enumerate  all  the  means  of  culture 
would  be  impossible,  seeing  they  are  wide  as 
the  world,  and  the  process  begins  with  the 
cradle,  and,  we  may  well  believe,  does  not 
end  with  the  grave.  What,  then,  is  the  re- 
lation in  which  a  university  stands  to  this 
great  life-process  ?  It  may  be  said  to  be  a 
sort  of  microcosm,  —  a  small  practical  abridg- 
ment of  an  unending  book,  — a  compend  of 
the  past  thought  and  cultivation  of  the  race, 
reduced  to  the  shape  and  dimensions  best 
fitted  to  be  taken  in.  And  this  abridgment 
or  summary  of  the  past  experience  of  the 
race  is  applied  to  young  minds  just  at  the  age 


ITS  RELATION    TO  RELIGION.  21 

whicli  is  most  susceptible  to  receive  impres- 
Bions  deeply,  and  retain  them  permanently. 

Every  one  must  observe  to  what  a  large 
extent  the  advocates  of  education  nowadays, 
of  the  lowest  as  well  as  of  the  highest,  agree 
in  urging  it  for  the  moral  fruits  it  produces. 
Remove  ignorance,  say  the  advocates  of  pri- 
mary education,  and  you  put  an  end  to  crime. 
And  though  we  may  doubt  the  necessity  of 
the  alleged  sequence,  we  gladly  accept  their 
testimony  to  the  moral  aim  which  all  educa- 
tion should  imply.  The  Culturists,  again  — 
by  which  term  I  mean  not  those  who  esteem 
culture,  (as  what  intelligent  man  does  not?) 
but  those,  its  exclusive  advocates,  who  rec- 
ommend it  as  the  one  panacea  for  all  the  ills 
of  humanity,  —  the  Culturists  are  never  done 
insisting  that  it  is  not  for  its  utilitarian  results, 
not  for  the  technical  skill  and  information  it 
implies,  nor  for  the  professional  success  it  may 
secure,  that  they  value  culture,  but  for  its 
effect  in  elevating  the  whole  man.  They  tell 
us  that  men,  in  the  last  resort,  are  not  formed 
by  rules  or  precepts,  no,  nor  by  what  are 
called  moral  principles,  —  that  men's  lives 
and  characters  are  determined  mainly  by  their 
ideal,  that  is,  by  the  thing  they  lay  to  heart 
and  live  by,  often  without  themselves  being 


22  THE  AIM   OF   CULTURE. 

aware  of  it,  by  that  which  they  in  their  in- 
most souls  love,  desire,  aim  at,  as  the  best 
possibility  for  themselves  and  others.    By  the 
ideal,  therefore,  that  a  man  loves,  and  by  his 
persistency  in  cleaving  to  it,  and  working  for 
it,  shall  you  know  what  he  really  is.     This 
ideal,  whatever   it  be,  seen  and   embraced, 
and  melting  into  a  man,  constitutes  his  true 
and  essential  nature,  and  reveals  itself  in  all 
he  thinks  and  does.    They  tell  us,  and  truly, 
that  it  is  not  the  educated  and  refined  only 
who  have  their  ideal,  —  that  every  man,  even 
the  most  illiterate,  has  an  ideal,  whether  he 
knows  it  or  not ;  that  is,  every  man  has  some- 
thing which  forms  the   ruling  thought,  the 
main  desire,  of  his  life.     The  beggar  in  his 
rags  is  not  without   his   ideal,  though    that 
probably  does  not  go  beyond  plenty  to  eat 
and  drink,  and  a  comfortable  house  to  live  in. 
If  he  be  advanced  a  little  above  abject  want, 
then  perhaps  his  ideal  is  to  become  wealthy, 
respected  of  all  men  for  his  riches.     These, 
though  material  aims,  are  yet  none  the  less 
ideals  to   those  who    entertain   them.     The 
Culturists,  then,  go  on  to  say  that,  since  every 
man  must  have  his  ideal,  —  material  and  self- 
ish, or  unselfish  and  spiritual,  —  it  lies  mainly 
with  culture  to  determine  whether  men  shall 


ITS  RELATION   TO  RELIGION.  23 

rest  content  with  grosser  aims  or  raise  their  \ 
thoughts  to  the  higher  ideals.  These  lat- 
ter, they  remind  us,  are  manifold :  there  is 
the  ideal  poetical,  the  ideal  scientific,  the 
ideal  political,  the  ideal  philanthropic:  and 
that  which  of  these,  or  other  such  like,  a  man 
shall  set  before  him  must  be  determined  by 
his  inborn  bias  and  temperament,  his  natural 
gifts,  and  his  outward  circumstances.  There 
are  diversities  of  gifts,  and  to  every  man  his 
own  gift.  The  kind  and  measure  of  gifts 
each  man  has  will  shape  and  modify  the  ideal 
which  is  proper  to  him.  And  each  man's 
practical  wisdom  consists  in  truly  discover- 
ing the  ideal  which  naturally  belongs  to  him- 
self, and  in  so  dealing  with  the  facts  and  cir- 
cumstances in  which  his  lot  is  cast,  as  to 
reconcile  by  a  true  adjustment  his  inward 
aspiration  and  his  outward  surroundings. 

If,  then,  it  be  true  that  every  man  must 
have  an  ideal  of  some  sort,  and  that  this,  be 
it  base  or  lofty,  rules  his  whole  being,  the 
Culturists  tell  us  that  it  is  the  business  of 
culture  to  waken  men  to  the  consciousness  of 
some  ideal,  and  to  set  .before  them  true  and 
lofty  standards ;  for  the  young  especially  to 
open  up,  through  the  manifold  obstructions 
of  sense   and   outward   things,   avenues   by 


24  THE  AIM  OF  CULTURE. 

which  the  soul  may  catch  some  glimpse  of  the 
true  beauty,  the  real  good,  ''of  that  light 
which  being  compared  with  the  light  is  found 
before  it,  more  beautiful  than  the  sun,  and 
above  all  the  orders  of  the  stars."  ^ 

They  further  tell  us  that  it  is  the  business 
of  culture  not  only  to  set  before  men  the  vis- 
ion, but  to  impart  to  them  the  cunning  hand 
which  shall  impress  on  outward  things  the 
pattern  of  the  things  seen  in  the  mount. 
This  culture  does,  by  training  them  in  the 
best  knowledge  of  tlie  time,  by  imbuing  them 
with  as  much  of  the  sciences  and  arts  as  they 
can  take  in  and  use.  Without  such  practical 
training  of  the  faculties  and  the  hand,  a  man, 
however  true  his  ideal,  will  become  a  mere 
dreamer,  powerless  to  effect  anything.  And 
life  is  so  complex,  the  materials  we  have  to 
deal  with  so  various  and  intractable,  that  it 
needs  long  and  severe  discipline  of  the  facul- 
ties to  give  a  man  the  chance  of  working  his 
way  towards  his  ideal  through  the  numberless 
hindrances  that  surround  him. 

We  see,  then,  that  culture,  according  to 
the  claim  put  in  for  it  by  its  most  ardent  ad- 
vocates, is  said  to  do  two  things  :  first,  it  sets 
before   a   man  a  high  ideal  end  to  aim  at, 
1  Note  I. 


ITS  RELATION   TO  RELIGION.  25 

Vvhicli  shall  enter  into  and  control  liis  life  ; 


secondly,  it  trains  all  the  faculties,  all  the  in- 
ward powers  and  outward  instruments,  — 
hand,  eye,  ear,  —  so  as  to  enable  him  in  some 
measure  to  realize  that  ideal  end,  and  over- 
come the  obstructions  that  lie  between  him 
and  it.  Such  is  the  claim  which  is  put  in  by 
the  Culturists.  And,  after  what  I  have  said 
at  the  commencement,  you  will  believe  that 
I  shall  not  gainsay  it.  True  as  far  as  it 
goes,  it  is,  however,  far  enough  from  being 
an  adequate  account  of  the  whole  matter. 

Before  quitting  this  subject,  let  me  but  add 
one  w^ord  in  defense  of  those  who  speak  of 
ideal  aims.  Very  practical  or  cynical  persons 
are  fond  of  sneering  at  these.  They  make 
merry,  as  it  is  easy  to  do,  with  those  who,  in 
their  phrase,  keep  vaporing  about  ideals. 
What  have  we,  or  most  men,  they  say,  to  do 
with  ideals  ?  Let  us  leave  them  to  the  rapt 
poet,  the  recluse  thinker,  the  dreaming  vis- 
ionary. It  is  the  actual,  the  hard  facts  of 
life  that  we  have  to  deal  wuth ;  to  push  our 
way  in  the  world,  maintain  the  struggle  for 
existence,  immersed  in  the  tangible  and  ma- 
terial, hemmed  in  by,  often  nigh  crushed  be- 
neath, imperious  circumstances.  Enough 
for  us  if  we  can  battle  through  them,  without 


26  THE  AIM  OF   CULTURE. 

being  overpowered.  Ideals !  let  us  leave 
them  to  those  who  have  wealth  and  leisure  ; 
they  are  among  the  luxuries,  not  the  necessi- 
ties of  life.  For  us  we  have  enough  to  do  to 
make  something  of  the  real. 

To  make  something  of  the  real !  Yes, 
that's  it.  But  how  are  we  to  make  anvthinc" 
of  the  actual  unless  we  have  some  aim  to  direct 
our  efforts,  some  clew  to  c^uide  us  throuMi  its 
labyrinths  ?  And  this  aim,  this  clew,  is  just 
what  is  meant  by  the  Ideal.  You  may  dislike 
the  word  and  reject  it,  but  the  thing  you  can- 
not get  rid  of,  if  you  would  live  any  life  above 
that  of  brutes.  An  aim,  an  ideal  of  some 
sort,  be  it  material  or  spiritual,  you  must 
have,  if  you  have  reason,  and  look  before 
and  after.  True,  no  man's  life  can  be  wholly 
occupied  with  the  ideal,  not  even  the  poet's 
or  the  philosopher's.  Each  man  must  ac- 
quaint himself  with  numberless  details  ;  must 
learn  the  stuff  that  the  world  is  made  of,  and 
how  to  deal  with  it.  Even  Phidias  and 
Michael  Angelo  must  study  the  nature  of  the 
rough  block  they  have  to  hew.  Not  even 
the  most  ethereal  being  can  live  wholly  upon 
sunbeams,  and  most  lives  are  far  enoucdi 
removed  from  the  sunbeams.  Yet  sunshine, 
light,    is   necessary   for   every   man.      And 


ITS  RELATION   TO  RELIGION.  27 

though  most  are  immersed  in  business,  oi 
batthno;  all  life  through  with  touMi  conditions, 
yet,  if  we  are  not  to  sink  into  mere  selfish 
animality,  we  must  needs  have  some  mastei 
light  to  guide  us  ;  "  something  that  may 
dwell  upon  the  heart,  though  it  be  not  named 
upon  the  tongue."  For  if  there  be  some- 
times a  danger  lest  the  young  enthusiast, 
through  too  great  devotion  to  an  abstract 
ideal,  should  essay  the  impossible,  and  break 
himself  against  the  walls  of  destiny  that  hem 
him  in,  far  more  common  is  it  for  men  to  be 
so  crushed  under  manhood's  burdens,  that 
they  abandon  all  the  high  aims  of  their  youth, 
and  submit  to  be  driven  like  gin-horses  — 

"Round  the  daily  scene 
Of  sad  subjection,  and  of  sick  routine." 

The  Culturists,  then,  speak  truly  when  they 
tell  us  that  every  man  must  have  some  ideal, 
and  that  it  is  all-important  that,  while  the 
mind  is  plastic,  each  should  form  some  high 
aim  which  is  true  to  his  own  nature,  and 
true  to  the  truth  of  things.  It  has  been  well 
said  that  youth  is  the  season  when  men  are 
engaged  in  forming  their  ideals.  In  mature 
age  they  are  engaged  in  trying  to  impress 
them  on  the  actual  world.  And  culture  pro- 
fesses to  effect  that  men  shall  fix  their  aims 


28  THE  AIM  OF   CULTURE. 

high  and  true,  and  be  equipped  with  the 
loiowledge,  skill,  aptitudes,  required  for  car- 
rying them  out  successfully. 

But  the  question  now  occurs,  which  has 
probably  suggested  itself  ere  now  to  some 
who  hear  me.  What  does  religion  say  to  all 
this  ?  We  had  thought  it  had  been  religion 
which  set  forth  the  ends  of  life,  and  supplied 
the  motives  and  the  power  for  striving  to- 
wards them.  But  now  it  seems  that  there  is 
some  rival  power,  called  Culture,  which  claims 
for  itself  these  architectonic  functions  which 
we  had  hitherto  thought  belonged  of  right 
to  Religion.  In  the  language  of  Aristotle, 
which  of  these  two  is  the  architectonic  or 
master-art  which  prescribes  to  all  the  other 
arts  and  occupations  of  life  their  functions,  as 
the  master-builder  prescribes  their  duties  to 
his  workmen  ?  Or  are  Culture  and  Religion 
really  rival  powers  ?  are  they  to  be  regarded 
as  in  any  way  antagonistic  to  each  other? 
And  if  not,  what  are  their  mutual  relations  ? 
in  what  way  do  they  meet  and  act  on  each 
other  ? 

This  is  the  question  with  which  I  shall 
have  to  deal  more  or  less,  now  leaving  it, 
now  returning  to  it,  throughout  these 
Lectures. 


ITS  RELATION    TO  RELIGION.  29 

One  thing  is  obvious,  that,  however  much 
the  end  of  life,  as  laid  down  by  religion,  may 
diverge  fi'om  the  view  taken  by  culture,  yet 
relio-ion  will  have  nothing  to  say  against  the 
assertion  that  life  must  be  ruled  by  an  aim 
which  shall  be  ideal.  For  what  can  be  more 
ideal  than  that  which  religion  sets  before  us  ? 
"  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God."  "  Be 
ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is 
perfect." 

Let  this,  then,  be  clearly  understood,  that 
whether  we  look  at  life  from  the  side  of 
Culture  or  from  that  of  Religion,  in  either 
case  we  must  be  guided  by  an  ideal  light, 
which  is,  indeed,  the  only  real  and  powerful 
guidance. 

Now  as  to  the  relation  in  which  these  two 
stand  to  each  other :  — 

Culture  proposes  as  its  end  the  carrying 
of  man's  nature  to  its  highest  perfection,  the 
developing  to  the  full  all  the  capacities  of  our 
humanity.  If,  then,  in  this  view,  humanity 
be  contemplated  in  its  totality,  and  not  in 
some  partial  side  of  it.  Culture  must  aim  at 
developing  our  humanity  in  its  Godward  as- 
pect, as  well  as  its  mundane  aspect.  And  it 
must  not  only  recognize  the  religious  side  of 
humanity,  but  if  it  tries  to  assign    the  due 


30  TEE  AIM   OF    CULTURE. 

place  to  each  capacity,  and  assign  to  all  tlie 
capacities  their  mutual  relations,  it  must  con- 
cede to  the  Godward  capacities  that  para- 
mount and  dominating  place  which  rightfully 
belongs  to  them,  if  they  are  recognized  at  all. 
That  is,  Culture  must  embrace  Religion,  and 
end  in  it. 

Again,  to  start  from  the  side  or  point  of 
view  of  religion :  —  The  ground  of  all  relig- 
ion, that  which  makes  it  possible,  is  the  rela- 
tion in  which  the  human  soul  stands  to  God. 
This  relation  is  the  root  one,  and  determines 
what  a  man  really  is.  As  a  Kempis  says, 
"What  thou  art  in  the  sight  of  God,  that 
thou  truly  art."  The  practical  recognition 
of  this  relation  as  the  deepest,  most  vital, 
most  permanent  one,  as  that  one  which  em- 
braces and  regulates  all  others,  this  is  relig- 
ion. And  each  man  is  religious  just  in  pro- 
portion as  he  does  practically  so  recognize 
this  bond,  which  binds  him  to  his  Maker. 

If,  then,  religion  be  this,  it  must  embrace 
culture  :  first,  because  it  is  itself  the  culture 
of  the  highest  capacity  of  our  being;  and 
secondly,  because,  if  not  partial  and  blind,  it 
must  acknowledge  all  the  other  capacities  of 
man's  nature  as  gifts  which  God  has  given, 


ITS  RELATION   TO  RELIGIOX.  oi 

and  given  that  man  may  cultivate  tliem  to 
the  utmost,  and  elevate  them  by  connecting 
them  with  the  thought  of  the  Giver,  and  the 
purpose  for  which  He  gave  them. 

We  see,  then,  that  religion,  when  it  has  its 
perfect  work,  must  lead  on  to  culture.  If 
this  view  be  true,  culture  and  religion  are 
not,  when  rightly  regarded,  two  opposite 
powers,  but  they  are  as  it  were  one  line  with 
two  opposite  poles.  Start  from  the  manw^ard 
pole,  and  go  along  the  line  honestly  and 
thoroughly,  and  you  land  in  the  divine  one. 
Start  from  the  divine  pole,  and  carry  out  all 
that  it  implies,  and  you  land  in  the  manward 
pole,  or  the  perfection  of  humanity.  Ideally 
considered,  then,  culture  must  culminate  in 
religion,  and  religion  must  expand  into  cul- 
ture. So  it  ought  to  be,  —  so,  we  sometimes 
imagine,  it  might  be.  But  it  requires  little 
knowledge  of  history,  and  a  very  small  ob- 
servation of  men,  to  convince  us  that  so  it 
has  not  been  in  the  past,  so  it  is  not  now. 
Goethe,  the  high-priest  of  culture,  loathes 
Luther,  the  preacher  of  righteousness.  The 
earnestness  and  fervor  of  the  one  disturb  and 
offend    the    calm    serenity  which    the   other 

loves.  And  Luther,  likely  enough,  had  he 
seen  Goethe,  would  have  done  him  but  scant 

justice. 


32  THE  AUf    OF    CULTURE. 

Mr.  Arnold  figures  to  himself  Virgil  and 
Shakespeare  accompanying  the  Puritan  Pil- 
grim   Fathers  on  their  voyage  to  America, 
and  asks  if  the  two  poets  would    not  have 
found  the  company  of  such  men  intolerable. 
If,  however,  the  two  poets  instead  of  the  Pu- 
ritan exiles  had  been  thrown  into  tlie  society 
of  St.  Paul  and  St.  John,  would  they  liave 
found    their    society   much    more    to    their 
mind  ?     These  sharp  contrasts  suggest  some 
questions  not  easy  to  answer.     It  is  no  use 
smoothing  them  over  by  commonplaces  about 
the  one-sidedness  of  all  men,  and  the  limita- 
tions of  our   nature.      When,  however,  Ave 
think  over  it,  we  can  see  some  reasons  whicli 
make  the  combination  of  the  two  things  dif- 
ficult, so  difficult  that  it  is  only  in  a  few,  and 
these  rarely  gifted  natures,  that  they  have 
both  coexisted  in  anvhio-li  degree.     Take  the 
case  of  a  man  who  has  not  had  a  religious 
home  and  childhood,  but  has  begun  with  cul- 
ture.    It   is    easy  to    see    that    such  a  one, 
when  from  his  scientific    investio-ations   and 
philosophical  reasonings,  or  aBsthetic  ideals,  he 
turns  his  thoughts  for  the  first  time  towards 
religious  truth,  will  come  in  contact  witli  an 
order  of  things  that  is  alien  to  the  ways  of 
thought  and  repugnant  to  the  modes  of  feel- 


ITS   RELATION    TO  RELIGION.  33 

ing  engendered  in  liim  by  culture.  The 
practical  thought  of  God  is  something  so  dif- 
ferent from  the  apprehension  of  any  truth  of 
science  or  philosophy,  and  puts  the  mind 
into  such  a  different  posture  from  any  to 
which  these  have  accustomed  it,  that  the 
mere  man  of  culture  will  feel  that  for  such 
contemplation  he  either  requires  new  facul- 
tiesj  or  must  make  a  new  use  of  the  old,  and 
likely  enough  he  will  give  it  up  in  despair. 
Again,  the  account  which  Christianity  gives 
of  human  nature,  even  if  we  avoid  all  exag- 
geration, is  not  one  that  readily  falls  in  with 
the  habits  either  of  the  scientific  or  of  the 
poetic  mind.  The  mystery  of  evil,  as  its 
working  is  described  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  and  man's  need  of  redemption,  his 
helplessness  until  succored  by  a  strength 
hi2:her  than  his  own :  these  are  truths  that 
do  not  easily  find  a  place  in  any  system  of 
ordered  evolution  such  as  science  delights  to 
trace,  —  rather  they  are  yawning  gaps  that 
come  in  .to  baffle  and  perplex  all  the  scien- 
tific methods.  Nor  are  they  less  alien  to  im- 
aginations that  have  been  fed  on  the  great 
poetic  creations,  for  these  lend  themselves 
readily  to  the  pantheistic  idea  of  evil  as  a 
necessary  step  on  the  road  to  good,  rather 


34  THE  AIM   OF    CULTURE. 

than  to  the  Christian  view  of  sin.  In  short, 
the  transition  from  the  objects  on  which  cul- 
ture dwells  to  those  on  which  religion  dwell* 
is  the  passage  from  a  region  in  which  hu- 
man thought,  human  effort,  human  self-de- 
velopment, are  paramount,  to  a  region  in 
which  man's  own  powers  are  entirely  subor- 
dinate, in  which  recipiency,  not  self-activity, 
is  the  primary  law  of  life,  and  in  which  the 
chief  worker  is  not  man,  but  God. 

To  put  the  matter  forcibly,  let  me  quote 
the  words  of  a  venerable  writer  still  living  ;  ^ 
"  It  is  impossible,"  he  says,  "  to  look  into 
the  Bible  with  the  most  ordinary  attention 
without  feelino'  that  we  have  2;ot  into  a  moral 
atmosphere  quite  different  from  that  which 
we  breathe  in  the  world,  and  in  the  world's 
literature.  In  the  Bible  God  is  presented  as 
doing  everything,  and  as  being  the  cause  and 
end  of  everything ;  and  man  appears  only  as 
he  stands  related  to  God,  either  as  a  revolted 
creature  or  as  the  subject  of  Divine  grace. 
Whereas  in  the  world,  and  in  the  books  which 
contain  the  history  of  the  world,  according  to 
its  own  judgment,  man  appears  to  do  every- 
thincr,  and  there  is  as  little  reference  to  God 
as  if  there  were  no  such  Being  in  the  uni- 
verse." 

1  See  Note  II. 


ITS   RELATION    TO  RELIGION.  35 

These  words  point  to  a  great  but  real  op- 
position, to  a  vast  hiatus  not  to  be  gainsaid 
or  passed  by,  —  the  (h'fference  between  the 
point  of  view  of  tlie  Bible  and  of  ordinary  lit- 
erature, —  the  opposed  aspects  that  life  wears, 
according  as  we  accept  the  religious  interpre- 
tation of  the  workl  or  the  secular  interpreta- 
tion of  it.  No  doubt  it  is  the  great  end  of 
Christianity  to  heal  this  loncr-standincv  discord, 
to  do  away  the  ancient  opposition  between 
things  divine  and  things  human,  to  reconcile 
all  true  human  learning,  not  less  than  human 
hearts,  to  God.  That  in  every  age  Christian- 
ity has  done  so  in  some  measure,  history  is 
the  witness.  That  it  has  yet  much  to  do, 
vast  tracts  of  thought  to  reclaim  and  spiritu- 
alize, before  the  reconcihatlon  is  complete,  if 
it  is  ever  to  be  complete,  —  this  is  but  too 
apparent. 

It  may  help  to  make  the  whole  matter 
clearer,  if,  before  concluding,  we  cast  our  eye 
backward  to  tlie  sources  whence  first  issued 
these  two  great  streams  of  tendency  that 
long  since,  more  or  less  combined,  and  now 
compose  the  main  current  of  civiHzation. 

Of  culture  in  its  intellectual  side,  of  those 
mental  gifts  which  have  educated  the  civil- 


36  THE   AIM    OF    CULTURE. 

ized  world,  and  moulded  thought  to  what  it 
is,  Greece,  you  all  know,  is  the  birth-land. 
It  was  there  that  these  gifts  sprang  to  light, 
and  were  matured  before  they  were  spread 
abroad  and  became  the  inheritance  of  the  na- 
tions. The  first  father,  the  Apostle  of  civil- 
ization, as  he  has  been  called,  was  Homer. 
For  several  centuries  the  poems  of  the  old- 
minstrel  floated  about  orally,  intrusted  only  to 
men's  memories.  But  when  the  Athenian 
prince  gathered  together  his  scattered  frag- 
ments, and  reduced  them  to  writing,  "  the 
vagrant  ballad-singer  "  was,  as  it  were,  en- 
throned as  the  king  of  minstrelsy,  and  "  in- 
vested with  the  office  of  forming  the  young 
mind  of  Greece  to  noble  thoughts  and  bold 
deeds."  ^  Henceforth  to  be  read  in  Homer 
became  the  first  requirement  of  an  educated 
gentleman.  And  as  time  went  on  there  fol- 
lowed in  due  succession  all  the  order  of  the 
poets.  Didactic,  lyric,  tragic,  comic  poetry, 
each  of  these  in  Greece  first  came  to  licj;ht, 
and  there,  too,  found  its  consummate  form. 
Hesiod,  Pindar,  jEschyhis,  Sophocles,  Aris- 
tophanes, —  these  followed  in  the  train  of 
Homer,  and,  though  subordinate  to  him,  be- 
came  likewise   the    teachers   of  the    Greek 

1  Note  III. 


ITS  RELATION   TO  RELIGION.  37 

youth.  On  poetry  followed  history,  —  with 
Herodotus  for  the  father  of  pictorial,  Thu- 
cydides  of  philosophic,  history.  And  as  his- 
tory came  from  the  consciousness  of  political 
life,  so  also  did  oratory,  which  Avas  one  of  its 
younger  products. 

And  when  all  these  intellectual  forms  had 
nearly  completed  themselves,  last  of  all,  as 
the  maturest  creation  of  Hellenic  mind,  came 
philosophy,  —  philosophy  with  its  countless 
names  and  variety  of  phases,  but  with  Socra- 
tes, Plato,  and  Aristotle  standing  in  the  fore- 
front, for  all  time  "  the  masters  of  those  who 
know." 

No  one  who  looks  back  on  that  marvelous 
fertility,  that  exhaustless  variety  of  the  rarest 
gifts  of  thought,  the  product  of  so  small  a  land 
and  so  few  centuries,  the  wonder  of  which 
only  increases  the  more  we  contemplate  it, 
can  believe  that  it  was  intended  to  begin  and 
end  in  the  land  which  gave  it  birth,  —  that 
these  words  of  sayers  and  thinkers  had  ful- 
filled the  end  they  were  designed  for  when 
they  had  delighted  or  instructed  only  the 
men  who  first  heard  them.  No;  the  idea 
must  force  itself  on  every  one  who  really  re- 
flects on  it  that  this  inexhaustible  richness 
was  riven  to  Athens,  that  she  might  be  the 


a»  THE  AIM   OF    CULTURE. 

intellectual  mother  of  the  world,  —  that  lieJ 
thoughts  might  be  a  possession  for  all  ages. 

Just  as  we  see  that  the  long  geological 
epoch,  which  stored  up  the  vast  coal  meas- 
ures, was  evidently  preparing  those  material 
resources  which  were  not  only  to  minister  to 
the  physical  comfort,  but  to  create  the  phys- 
ical civilization  of  great  nations  yet  to  be, 
even  so  this  exuberance  of  intellectual 
wealth  seems,  in  the  design  of  the  world, 
to  have  been  so  marvelously  matured  in 
Greece,  that  it  might  be  as  a  treasure-house 
from  which  not  so  much  the  Greeks  them- 
selves as  all  future  generations  might  be 
schooled,  elevated,  and  refined. 

With  regard  to  the  action  of  Hellenic 
thought,  however,  two  remarks  are  to  be 
made.  The  first  is,  it  was  not  so  much  im- 
mediately and  directly,  as  by  creating  Latin 
literature  and  reaching  modern  thought 
through  the  medium  of  the  Latin  language, 
that  Greece  has  propelled  European  civiliza- 
tion. It  was  not  till  the  revival  of  letters  in 
the  fifteenth  century  that  Greek  thouglit 
came  face  to  face  with  the  modern  world, 
and  infused  itself  directly  into  western  cul- 
ture. Of  course  it  is  an  old  remark  that  in 
Hterature  Rome  produced  little  original,  and 


ITS   RELATION    TO  RELIGION.  39 

mainly  imitated  Greece.  But  wlien  we  look 
at  it,  there  is  more  in  this  than  at  first 
appears.  It  is,  as  has  been  well  said,  "  a 
proof  of  the  sort  of  instinct  which  has  guided 
the  course  of  civilization.  The  world  was  to 
have  certain  intellectual  teachers,  and  no 
others.  Homer  and  Aristotle,  with  the  poets 
and  philosophers  who  circle  round  them, 
were  to  be  the  schoolmasters  of  all  o-enera- 
tions  ;  and  therefore  the  Latins,  falling  into 
the  law  on  which  the  world's  education  was 
to  be  carried  on,  so  added  to  the  classical 
library  as  not  to  reverse  or  interfere  with 
what  had  been  already  determined." 

The  second  remark  I  would  offer  is,  that 
whatever  else  Greece  has  given  to  the  world, 
however  much  she  may  have  educated  men 
to  clear  and  subtle  thouo;ht,  and  to  the  deli- 
cate  sense  of  beauty,  and  to  the  highest  forms 
of  abstract  thinking,  it  is  not  Greece  that  has 
awakened  and  satisfied  the  relio^ious  lono-Inors 
of  humanity.  Indeed,  it  is  a  very  noteworthy 
fact,  that  before  Hellenic  thought  became 
cosmopolitan,  it  dropped  the  native  ethnic 
religion,  and  left  it  behind  in  the  place  of  its 
oirth  as  a  residuum  that  could  not  live  else- 
where. What  was  purely  intellectual,  that 
was  catholic    and  fitted  for    all  time  ;  what 


40  THE  AIM  OF    CULTURE. 

was  religious,  that  was  local,  temporary,  and 
doomed  to  perish.  Connected  with  this  fact 
is  the  divorce  in  Greece  between  religion  and 
morality,  in  all  but  a  very  few  of  her  highest 
minds.  Indeed,  it  is  observable  how,  as  the 
moral  sense  of  the  Hellenic  race  grew  deeper 
and  wider,  the  original  religion  of  Homer 
fell  off  from  it  as  felt  to  be  inadequate. 

Greece,  then,  was  the  source  of  intellectual 
culture  ;  but  we  must  look  to  a  remoter  and 
more  eastern  land  to  find  the  original  source 
of  religious  knowledge.  "  Jerusalem,"  as 
has  been  said,  "  is  the  fountain-head  of  re- 
ligious knowledge  to  the  world,  as  Athens  is 
of  secular."  The  ancient  w^orld  contained 
these  two,  and  only  these  two,  centres  of 
illumination,  separate  and  independent,  to 
which  the  modern  world  is  indebted  for  the 
highest  gifts  of  human  learning  and  the  life- 
giving  powers  of  divine  grace.  Greece, 
while  it  enlightened  and  delighted  the  intel- 
lect,  left  the  conscience  and  spirit  of  man  un- 
satisfied. To  meet  the  wants  of  these,  to 
reach  man  in  the  deepest  seats  of  his  being, 
it  required  something  more  inward,  more 
penetrating,  more  vital.  It  required  the  sim- 
ple yet  profound  truths  of  that  revelation 
which  began  and  was  perfected  in    Judaea. 


ITS  RELATION   TO  RELIGION.  41 

With  regard  to  the  teaching  of  that  revela- 
tion, I  will  note  but  two  things.  One  is, 
that  to  the  Hebrew  mind  the  thought  of  mo- 
rality and  the  thought  of  God  were  never  sep- 
arate, but  were  ever  essentially  at  one.  That 
word  belono-s  to  the  oldest  record  of  the  He- 
brew  race,  ''  Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  do  right  ?  "  And  this  interpenetration 
of  morality  and  religion,  which  pervades  the 
teachings  alike  of  lawgiver,  psalmist,  and 
prophet,  finds  its  perfect  consummation  in 
Him  in  whom  the  revelation  culminated  and 
closed.  The  other  thing  I  would  remark  is 
the  striking  fact  that  it  was  from  amidst  a 
people  hitherto  the  most  isolated  and  exclu- 
sive of  all  known  peoples, — a  nation  shut 
off  from  all  the  world  by  the  most  narrow 
restrictions  and  prejudices,  — •  that  there 
arose,  in  all  the  force  of  living  conviction,  a 
faith  the  most  unrestricted,  the  most  expan- 
sive, and  all-embracing  which  the  world  had 
hitherto  known  or  ever  can  know. 

When  we  think  on  these  two  separate 
centres  of  illumination,  —  ''  the  grace  stored 
in  Jerusalem,  and  the  gifts  which  radiate 
from  Athens,"  —  the  thought  cannot  but 
occur,  How  do  these  two  stand  related  to 
3ach  other  ?     In  that  expression,  *'  when  the 


42  THE  AIM    OF    CULTURE, 

fullness  of  the  time  was  come,"  no  thoughtful 
student  of  history  can  fail  to  recognize, 
along  with  the  preparations  that  had  gone  on 
in  Judaea,  some  reference  to  the  work  which 
Greece  and  Rome  had  done  on  the  earth. 
You  remember  that  superscription  which 
was  written  in  letters  of  Greek,  and  Latin, 
and  Hebrew.  That  superscription  seems  to 
symbolize  the  confluence  of  powers  which 
thenceforward  were  to  rule  the  minds  of 
men.  That  central  grace  and  truth  which 
came  by  Jesus  Christ  was  to  go  forth  into 
the  world  embodied  in  the  language  which 
had  been  lono;  since  fashioned  bv  Homer  and 
Plato,  and  that  Hellenic  tongue  in  its  last 
decadence  was  to  be  made  "  the  vehicle  of 
higher  truths  and  a  holier  inspiration  than 
had  ever  haunted  the  dreams  of  bard  or  sage 
in  old  Achaia."  And  not  less,  in  order  that 
the  glad  tidings  might  spread  abroad,  was 
needed  the  political  action  of  Rome.  The 
world  had  first  to  be  leveled  down  into  one 
vast  empire,  and  the  stern  legionaries,  — 
"  those  massive  hammers  of  the  whole  earth," 
—  as  they  paved  the  great  highways  from 
the  Euphrates  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules, 
were,  though  they  knew  it  not,  fulfiUers  of 
Hebrew    prophecy,  and  preparing   the  way 


ITS  RELATION    TO   RELIGION.  48 

of  the  Lord  and  making  straight  in  the  desert 
a  highway  for  our  God.  So  it  was  that  Ju- 
daea, Greece,  and  Rome  combined  to  make 
possible  the  new  creation.  Not  in  Judaea 
alone,  but  in  the  other  two  countries  also, 
there  had  been  sohio;  on,  as  has  been  well 
said,  "  a  moral  and  spiritual  expansion,  which 
rendered  the  world  more  capable  of  appre- 
hending the  Gospel  than  it  would  have  been 
in  any  earlier  age."  If  there  is  anything 
providential  at  all  in  human  history,  tliis  con- 
vergence of  influences  to  bring  about  "  the 
fullness  of  the  time  "  must  be  regarded  as 
such. 

The  agencies  which  in  those  past  ages 
combined  to  form  Christendom  have  their 
points  of  contact  and  cohesion  ;  they  have 
also  their  points  of  divergence  and  repulsion. 
During  some  epochs  the  harmony  of  their 
working  has  been  conspicuous ;  in  other 
epochs,  for  a  time  at  least,  they  have  seemed 
rather  to  be  divergent.  But  however  much, 
in  certain  turning-points  of  human  thought, 
these  great  influences,  or  their  modern  repre- 
sentatives, may  seem  for  a  time  to  collide, 
and  though  in  the  collision  many  individuals 
may  suffer  grievous  loss,  one  cannot  but  be- 
lieve  that    out   of    the   conflict   of    earnest 


44  THE  AIM    OF    CULTURE. 

though  one-sided  convictions,  there  will  at 
length  arise,  as  there  has  done  in  past  ages, 
a  revivified  faith,  a  harmony  of  elements, 
more  simple,  more  all-embracing,  more  spir- 
itual than  any  that  has  yet  been. 


LECTURE  n. 

THE   SCIENTIFIC   THEORY   OF   CULTURE. 

I  ENDEAVORED  in  my  last  lecture  to  bring 
before  you  the  meaning  of  culture  as  under- 
stood by  those  who  most  warmly  advocate  it, 
the  ends  it  jjroposes,  the  means  by  which  it 
seeks  those  ends.  There  was  less  need  to 
dwell  at  length  on  the  nature  of  religion,  as 
this,  we  may  assume,  is  more  commonly  un- 
derstood. We  saw  that  these  two,  though 
distinct  in  their  nature,  and  starting  from 
different  points  of  view,  are  not  really  op- 
posed. For  culture,  if  thoroughly  and  con- 
sistently carried  out,  must  lead  on  to  religion, 
that  is,  to  the  cultivation  of  the  spiritual  and 
heavenward  capacities  of  our  nature.  And 
religion,  if  truthful  and  wise,  must  expand 
into  culture,  must  urge  men  who  are  under 
its  power  to  make  the  most  of  all  their 
capacities,  not  only  for  the  worth  of  these 
capacities  in  themselves,  but  because  they  are 
gifts  of  God,  and  given  for  this  purpose,  that 


46  THE  SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

we  may  carefully  cultivate  them.  And  no 
doubt  culture,  pursued  under  sucli  a  feeling, 
would  acquire  a  new  worth ;  it  would  be 
purified  from  egotism  and  unhealthy  self- 
consciousness,  would  be  informed  by  a  more 
chastened,  reyerential  spirit,  which  w^ould 
add  to  it  a  new  excellence.  If  w^e  could 
but  attain  and  keep  the  highest  and  truest 
point  of  yie-w,  and  regard  "  humanity  as 
seen  in  the  light  of  God,"  all  good  gifts  of 
nature  and  of  art  would  fall  into  their  risht 
place,  for  they  would  assume  in  our  thoughts 
that  place  which  they  have  in  the  creative 
thought  of  the  Giver. 

So  it  is  in  truth ;  but  so  we  saw^  it  has  not 
been  in  fact.  We  saw  that  often  it  has  hap- 
pened that  culture  has  taken  account  of  all 
man's  capacities  but  the  highest,  and  so  has 
become  Godless  ;  on  the  other  hand,  that 
often  sincere  religion  has  thought  it  was 
honoring  things  spiritual  by  depreciating  the 
cultivation  of  the  lower  but  yet  essential  ca- 
pacities of  man,  and  so  has  narrowed  itself, 
and  cut  itself  off  from  reality. 

I  then  glanced  at  the  two  historical  centres 
of  illumination,  from  the  one  of  which  the 
world   had  received   its   spiritual,  from   the 


OF    CULTURE.  47 

other  its  intellectual  light,  and  I  noted  how 
these  two  had  providentially  combined  to 
bring  in  the  new  creation  of  Christianity. 
At  the  close  I  was  led  to  remark  that  while 
these  two  mighty  influences  had  combined, 
and  doubtless  were  intended  to  combine,  to 
bless  mankind,  one  could  not  but  perceive 
that  as  they  contain  elements  which  draw  to 
each  other  and  tend  to  coalesce,  so  they  con- 
tain other  elements  which  may  tend,  and  at 
certain  epochs  have  tended  to  divergence,  or 
even  to  collision. 

Such  an  epoch  was  that  wakening  of  the 
European  mind  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries,  known  as  the  revival  of  letters. 
When  the  fall  of  Constantinople  had  sent 
crowds  of  Greek  exiles  westward,  bearing 
-with  them  their  Greek  learning  into  Italy,  — 
when  the  printing  press,  newly  invented, 
was  pouring  forth  year  by  year  fresh  editions 
of  Greek  and  Latin  classics,  —  when  the 
discovery  of  another  hemisphere  had  opened 
a  boundless  horizon  for  enterprise  and  civili- 
zation, —  the  minds  of  men,  long  hide-bound 
in  scholastic  logic  and  theology,  sprang  for- 
ward, as  from  a  musty  prison-house,  into  a 
fresh  world  of  light.  In  Florence,  then  the 
fountain-head  of  the  revived  learning,   the 


48  THE  SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

recoil  from  the  outworn  paths  drove  many 
minds  not  only  from  scholasticism,  but  even 
from  Christianity.  They  fancied  they  could 
find  something  better,  wider,  more  human  in 
a  semi-pagan  philosophy.  Intoxicated,  as 
was  not  unnatural,  by  the  fascinations  of 
the  new  learning,  they  imagined  that  in  it 
alone  they  had  found  an  all-sufficient  por- 
tion. 

Again,  about  the  beginning  of  last  century, 
the  same  tendency  to  discard  religion,  at  least 
revealed  religion,  and  to  make  the  products 
of  human  learning  take  its  place,  set  in, 
though  in  another  form.  After  the  religious 
wars,  as  they  are  called,  of  the  seventeenth 
century  had  been  fought  out ;  after  the 
strong  Puritan  movement  had  spent  itself, 
there  came  on  a  period  of  active  philosophiz- 
ing, but  of  philosophy  unaccompanied  by 
spiritual  insight.  As  you  read  the  works  of 
Bishop  Butler,  you  seem  to  hear  the  voice  of 
a  great  and  earnest  thinker  crying  in  the 
wilderness,  and  pleading  with  a  suffering 
generation  to  believe  that  there  is  a  deeper 
moral  tendency  in  things  than  at  first  sight 
appears.  It  was  a  sifting,  active-minded 
age,  analyzing   all   things  and  believing    in 


OF    CULTURE.  49 

nothing  which  it  could  not  analyze  ;  an  age 
whollv  over-mastered  by  the  understanding, 
judging  according  to  sense. 

So  it  was  for  the  greater  part  of  last  cen- 
tury. But  Germany  before  the  French  Rev- 
olution, and  our  own  country  after  it,  startled 
by  the  conclusions  to  which  the  Sense-phi- 
losophy had  led  in  all  departments  of  life, 
and  the  devastation  it  had  made  among  all 
man's  chiefest  instincts  and  most  cherished 
faiths,  awoke  to  think  over  again  those  great 
problems  which  the  past  age  had  settled  and 
dismissed  so  complacently.  The  human 
mind  plunged  down  as  it  were  to  a  deeper 
layer  of  thought  and  feeling  than  that  which 
had  satisfied  the  age  of  the  Aufklarung,  as  it 
is  called.  The  philosophy  of  Voltaire  and 
Hume  could  hold  it  no  longer.  This  recoil 
manifested  itself  in  Germany  by  the  rise  of 
the  Kantian  philosophy  and  the  succession  of 
great  idealistic  systems  that  followed  it.  In 
this  country  it  was  seen  in  here  and  there  an 
attempt  at  a  deeper  metaphysic  than  that  of 
Locke  and  Hume,  but  much  more  in  the  in- 
creased depth  and  compass  of  the  poetry  and 
literature  of  the  first  fifty  years  of  this  cen- 
tury. Everywhere  that  literature  is  per- 
vaded by  greater  reach  of  thought,  increased 


60  THE  SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

tenderness,  more  reverence,  finer  aspiration. 
In  most  of  its  greater  poets  there  is  some- 
thing of  the 

"  Tendebautque  manus  ripae  ulterioris  amore,"  — 

the  stretching  forth  the  hands  in  yearning 
for  a  farther  shore.  It  is  clear  that  when 
culture  is  in  such  a  phase,  it  more  readily 
allies  itself  with  religion  than  when  it  is 
sense-bound,  unenthusiastic,  and  analytic 
mainly  of  the  more  obvious  phenomena. 

The  years  about  1840  may  be  taken  as  the 
time  when  the  spiritual  flood-tide  had  reached 
the  full.  It  is  always  very  difficult  to  esti- 
mate the  age  in  which  you  are  living,  yet  I 
think  we  seem  to  have  come  in  durino;  the 
last  twenty  years  for  the  ebb  of  that  spiritual 
wave.  Wordsworth,  in  his  day,  complained 
that  — 

"Plain  living  and  high  thinking  are  no  more." 

Of  our  day  it  may  be  truly  said  that  high  liv- 
ing and  plain  thinking  are  the  all  in  all.  In 
an  age  of  great  material  prosperity  like  the 
present,  when  the  comforts  and  conveniences 
of  physical  life  have  greatly  increased,  and 
science  is  every  day  increasing  them,  this 
world  is  a^  t  to  seem  in  itself  a  "  satisfying 


OF    CULTURE.  61 

abode,"  quite  irrespective  of  any  hope  be- 
yond. The  spread  of  knowledge  is  doing  so 
much  to  remove  many  of  the  surface  ills  of 
life,  that  vague  and  exaggerated  hopes  are 
apt  to  be  fostered  of  what  it  may  yet  do  for 
the  heahng  of  the  deepest  disorders.  To 
minds  that  have  got  themselves  intoxicated 
with  notions  of  material  progress,  this  world, 
as  I  have  said,  is  apt  to  seem  enough,  and 
man  to  appear  a  satisfying  object  to  himself 
quite  apart  from  God. 

This  tendency,  I  think,  manifests  itself,  as 
in  other  thino-s,  so  also  in  some  theories  of 
culture  which  have  lately  been  propounded. 
In  these  we  see  the  attempt  made  either  to 
substitute  for  religion  the  last  and  highest 
results  of  knowledge  and  culture,  or  to  bring 
religion  down  from  its  supremacy,  and  give 
the  highest  place  to  culture. 

The  first  view  which  I  shall  bring  before 
you,  and  which  will  occupy  the  rest  of  our 
time  to-day,  is  that  which  is  taken  by  the 
advocates  of  a  rigorous  and  exclusively 
scientific  culture,  by  those  who  would  make 
the  scientific  method  our  only  guide  in  life, 
not  merely  in  things  belonging  to  the  phys- 
ical  order,  but  not  less  in  the  highest  con- 


62  THE  SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

cerns  of  the  human  spirit.  As  tendencies 
are  best  seen  in  an  extreme  instance,  I  shall 
take  as  the  sample  of  this  tendency  an  in- 
auonral  lecture  delivered  about  two  years 
ago  by  Professor  Huxley,  at  the  South  Lon- 
don Working  Men's  College,  of  which  he 
was  then  President.  It  is  entitled  "  A  Lib- 
eral Education,  and  where  to  find  it."  There 
is  this  advantage  in  taking  the  instance  I 
have  chosen,  that  it  presents  in  a  strong  and 
easily  understood  form  a  way  of  thinking 
which  in  less  aggravated  degree  pervades 
very  widely  the  intellectual  atmosphere  of 
our  time. 

Mr.  Huxley  lays  down  as  his  first  principle, 
that  education,  in  its  largest  and  highest 
sense,  —  the  education  not  merely  of  schools 
and  colleges,  but  that  education  which  the 
human  spirit  is  receiving  uninterruptedly 
from  birth  till  death,  —  that  this  process  con- 
sists solely  in  learning  the  laws  of  nature, 
and  training  one's  self  to  obey  them.  And 
w^ithin  the  laws  of  nature  which  we  have  to 
learn  he  includes  not  only  the  physical  laws, 
but  also  those  moral  laws  which  govern  man 
and  his  ways.  We  must  set  ourselves  there- 
fore to  acquire  a  knowledge  not  only  of  the 
laws  that  reo-uUte  matter,  but  also  of   the 


OF   CULTURE.  5b 

moral  laws  of  the  universe.  These  moral 
laws  Mr.  Huxley  holds  to  be  as  rigid  and  self- 
exacting  as  the  physical  laws  appear  to  be. 
This  view  of  the  condition  of  our  existence 
here,  and  of  the  part  which  man  bears  in  it, 
Mr.  Huxley  set§  forth  in  a  startling,  not  to 
say  daring,  figure.  "  Suppose  it  were  per- 
fectly certain,"  he  says,  "  that  the  life  and 
fortune  of  every  one  of  us  would,  one  day  or 
another,  depend  upon  his  winning  or  losing 
a  game  of  chess,  don't  you  think  that  we 
should  all  consider  it  to  be  a  primary  duty 
to  learn  at  least  the  name  and  moves  of  the 
pieces  ;  '  to  have  a  notion  of  a  gambit,  and  a 
keen  eye  for  all  the  means  of  giving  and 
getting  out  of  a  check  ?  Do  you  not  think  we 
should  look  with  a  disapprobation  amounting 
to  scorn  upon  the  father  who  allowed  his 
son,  or  the  state  which  allowed  its  members, 
to  grow  up  without  knowing  a  pawn  from  a 
knight  ? 

"  Yet  it  is  a  very  plain  and  elementary 
truth  that  the  life,  the  fortune,  and  the  hap- 
piness of  every  one  of  us,  and,  more  or  less, 
of  those  connected  with  us,  do  depend  on 
our  knowing  something  of  the  rules  of  a 
game  infinitely  more  difficult  and  compli- 
cated than  chess.     It  is  a  game  which  haa 


54  THE   SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

been  played  for  untold  ages,  every  man  and 
woman  of  ns  being  one  of  the  two  players 
in  a  game  of  his  or  her  own.  The  chess- 
board is  the  world,  the  pieces  are  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  universe,  the  rules  of  the 
game  are  what  we  call  the  laws  of  nature. 
The  player  on  the  other  side  is  hidden  from 
us.  We  know  that  his  play  is  always  fair, 
just,  and  patient.  But  we  know,  to  our 
cost,  that  he  never  overlooks  a  mistake  or 
makes  the  smallest  allowance  for  ignorance. 
To  the  man  who  plays  well  the  highest 
stakes  are  paid  with  that  overflowing  gener- 
osity with  which  the  strong  shows  delight  in 
strength.  And  one  who  plays  ill  is  check- 
mated, without  haste,  but  without  remorse. 
My  metaphor,"  Professor  Huxley  proceeds, 
"  will  remind  some  of  you  of  the  famous  pic- 
tm^e  in  which  Retzsch  has  depicted  Satan  play- 
ing chess  with  a  man  for  his  soul.  Substitute 
for  the  mocking  fiend  in  that  picture  a  calm, 
strong  angel,  who  is  playing  for  love,  as  we 
say,  and  would  rather  lose  than  win,  and  I 
should  accept  it  as  an  image  of  human  life. 
Well,  what  I  mean  by  education  is  learning 
the  rules  of  this  mighty  game.  In  other 
words,  education  is  the  instruction  of  the  intel- 
lect in  the  laws  of  nature,  under  which  name 


OF  CULTURE,  65 

I  include  not  merely  things  and  their  forces, 
but  men  and  their  ways,  and  the  fashioning 
of  the  affections  and  the  will  into  an  earnest 
and  loving  desire  to  move  in  harmony  with 
these  laws.  For  me  education  means  neither 
more  nor  less  than  this." 

Now,  painful  as  such  a  view  of  life  must 
be  to  those  who  have  been  trained  in  a  de- 
vouter  school,  it  is  well  that  we  should  look 
at  it  steadily,  and  try  to  understand  and  in- 
terpret it  fairly.  For  it  is  a  strong  exposi- 
tion of  a  way  of  thinking  very  prevalent  at 
the  present  time,  which  contains  a  peculiar 
fascination  for  many  minds  which,  impatient 
of  mystery,  long,  before  all  things,  to  attain 
and  hold  a  clearly  cut  and  systematic  view. 
Definiteness  is  with  them  the  test  of  truth, 
and  this  theory  is  so  definite.  However,  let 
us  first  get  Professor  Huxley's  whole  state- 
ment. After  setting  it  forth  in  that  startling 
metaphor,  he  goes  on  to  remark  that  nature 
begins  the  education  of  her  children  before 
the  schools  do,  and  continues  it  after.  She 
takes  men  in  hand  as  soon  as  they  are  born, 
and  begins  to  educate  them.  It  is  a  rough 
kind  of  education,  one  in  which  "  ignorance 
is  treated  like  willful  disobedience,  incapacity 


bQ  TEE  SCIENTIFIC  THEORY 

is  punished  as  a  crime.  It  is  not  even  a 
word  and  a  blow,  but  the  blow  first  without 
the  word.  It  is  left  to  you  to  find  out  why 
your  ears  are  boxed."  Now  here  man  comes 
in,  and  takes  up  the  process  which  nature 
has  begun.  And  the  aim  of  the  artificial 
education  which  he  gives  in  schools  and  col- 
leges is,  or  ought  to  be,  to  make  good  the 
defects  in  nature's  methods,  to  prepare  the 
child  to  receive  nature's  teaching,  and  tc 
perfect  it.  All  artificial  education  should  be 
an  anticipation  of  nature's  education  ;  and  a 
liberal  education  is  an  artificial  education, 
one  which  has  prepared  a  man,  not  only  to 
escape  nature's  cuffs  and  blows,  but  to  seize 
the  rewards  which  she  scatters  no  less 
lavishly. 

Then  Mr.  Huxley  gives  us  the  following 
picture  of  what  he  conceives  an  educated 
man  to  be,  as  the  result  of  a  truly  liberal 
education  :  — 

"  That  man,  I  think,  has  had  a  liberal 
education  who  has  been  so  trained  in  youth 
that  his  body  is  the  ready  servant  of  his  will, 
and  does  with  ease  and  pleasure  all  the  work 
that,  as  a  mechanism,  it  is  capable  of ;  whose 
intellect  is  a  clear,  cold,  logic  engine,  with 
all  its  parts  of  equal  strength,  and  in  smooth 


OF  CULTURE.  67 

working  order ;  ready,  like  a  steam-engine, 
to  be  turned  to  any  kind  of  work,  and  spin 
the  gossamers  as  well  as  forge  the  anchors 
of  the  mind  ;  whose  mind  is  stored  with  a 
knowledo-e  of  the  great  and  fundamental 
truths  of  nature,  and  of  the  laws  of  her  op- 
erations ;  one  who,  no  stunted  ascetic,  is  full 
of  life  and  fire,  but  whose  passions  are 
trained  to  come  to  heel  by  a  vigorous  will, 
the  servant  of  a  tender  conscience  ;  who  has 
learned  to  love  all  beauty,  whether  of  nature 
or  art,  to  hate  all  vileness,  and  to  respect 
others  as  himself." 

This,  whatever  defects  it  may  have,  must 
be  allowed  to  be,  in  many  ways,  a  high  ideal 
of  education.  Though  it  gives  the  chief 
promise  to  physical  nature,  and  the  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  it,  yet  the  moral  side  of 
man  is  by  no  means  forgotten.  Mr.  Hux- 
ley's ideally-educated  man  is  to  have  his  pas- 
sions trained  to  obey  a  strong  will ;  this  will 
is  to  be  the  servant  of  a  tender  conscience  ; 
he  is  to  love  beauty,  to  hate  vileness,  to  re- 
spect others  as  himself.  I  would  have  you 
mark  these  things,  both  that  we  may  do  full 
justice  to  this  view,  and  that  we  may  the 
better  understand  the  radical  defect  under 
which  this  whole  theory  of  the  world  labors. 


68  THE  SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

The  first  remark  I  would  make  is,  that  it 
takes  for  granted  and  founds  on  that  theory 
of  knowledge  which  is  known  as  pure  and 
exclusive  phenomenalism.  Phenomenalism, 
you  know,  is  that  philosophy  which  holds 
that  all  existences,  all  possible  objects  of 
thought,  are  of  two  kinds  only,  external  and 
internal  phenomena ;  or  sensuous  objects, 
such  as  color,  shape,  hardness,  or  groups  of 
these,  and  the  unsensuous  ideas  we  have  of 
sensuous  objects.  If,  however,  we  add  that 
there  is  a  third  kind  of  existence,  or  object 
of  thought,  not  included  in  either  of  those 
classes  already  named,  but  distinct  and  dif- 
ferent from  these,  namely,  "  the  unsensuous 
percipients,  or  spirits  or  egos,  which  we  are 
each  of  us  conscious  that  we  ourselves  are," 
then  we  turn  the  flank  of  this  philosophy  ; 
the  inadequacy  of  the  theory  on  which  Mr. 
Huxley's  view  is  based  becomes  at  once  ap- 
parent. But  into  this  matter,  pertinent 
though  it  is  to  our  discussion,  I  will  not 
enter.  For,  as  I  have  already  said,  I  wish 
in  these  lectures  to  enter  as  little  as  possible 
into  questions  purely  metaphysical.^ 

The  second  remark  I  would  make  is,  that 
this  so-called  scientific  theory  of  life  implies 

1  Note  IV. 


OF   CULTURE.  59 

that,  though  probably  there  is  some  power 
behind  the  phenomena,  we  have  no  means  of 
ascertainino;  what  mind  and  character  it  is  of 
what  purpose  it  has  in  creating  and  upholding 
this  universe,  if  indeed  it  did  create  and  does 
uphold  it.  I  think  I  am  not  misinterpreting 
Professor  Huxley  when  I  assume  that  he 
holds  that  our  only  means  of  conjecturing 
what  is  the  mind  of  the  great  chess-player 
he  figures,  lie  in  the  scientific  investigation 
of  the  facts  of  the  world.  Now,  Hume  long 
ago  observed  that  if  we  judge  merely  by  the 
facts  of  the  world,  we  cannot  infer  any  fixed 
character  in  the  Divine  Being ;  but,  if  we  in- 
fer character  at  all,  it  must  be  a  two-sided,  in- 
consistent character,  partly  benevolent,  partly 
the  contrary. 

As  it  has  been  well  expressed,  the  theory 
comes  to  this,  that  "  we,  as  intelligent,  think- 
ing beings,  find  ourselves  in  a  universe  which 
meets  us  at  all  points  with  fixed  laws,  which 
encompass  us  about  externally,  and  rule  us 
also  within  ;  fixed  laws  in  the  region  of  mat- 
ter, fixed  laws  in  the  region  of  mind ;  that, 
therefore,  knowledge  for  us  is  knowledge  of 
laws,  and  can  be  nothing  more ;  and  that 
wisdom  in  us  is  simply  the  skill  to  turn  the 
knowledge  of  these  laws  to  the  best  account, 


60  THE  SCIENTIFIC  THEORY 

conforming  ourselves  to  them,  and  availing 
ourselves  of  them  to  appropriate  to  ourselves 
all  the  good  they  bring  within  our  reach." 
A  dreary  prospect  it  would  be  if  science 
really  shut  us  up  to  this.  Well  may  it  be 
said  that  ''  men  of  keener  hearts  would  be 
overpowered  with  despondency,  and  would 
even  loathe  existence,  did  they  suppose  them- 
selves under  the  mere  operation  of  fixed  laws, 
powerless  to  excite  the  pity  or  the  attention 
of  Him  who  appointed  them."  If,  however, 
truth  compelled  us  to  admit  it,  we  might  try 
to  bear  up  under  it  as  best  we  could.  But  is 
it  truth,  or  only  a  one-sided  philosophy,  that 
shuts  us  into  this  corner  ?  That  it  is  not 
truth,  the  following  considerations  will,  I  hope, 
help  to  convince  us. 

Observe,  then,  that  while  Professor  Hux- 
ley's ideal  man  is  to  respect  others  as  him- 
self, we  are  not  told  how  or  whence  this  most 
desirable  habit  of  mind  is  to  be  engendered. 
As  a  man  of  science.  Professor  Huxley  is 
bound  to  take  note  of  facts  before  all  things, 
and  to  pass  over  none.  In  this  very  lecture 
he  declares  himself  to  have  the  greatest  re- 
spect for  all  facts.  Now,  if  there  is  one  fact 
about  human  nature  more  certain  than  an- 
other, it  is   that  men  do  not  naturally  re- 


OF   CULTURE.  61 

spect  the  welfare  of  others,  —  rather  that 
"  all  men  seek  their  own,"  not  the  things 
which  belong  to  their  fellow-men.  It  takes 
much  moral  discipline  to  overcome  this  in- 
born propensity.  Experience  has,  I  believe, 
proved  that  it  cannot  be  overcome  except  by 
a  man  being  taken  out  of  self  as  his  centre, 
and  finding  a  new  centre  out  from  and  above 
himself,  on  which  he  can  rest,  to  which  all 
men  stand  equally  related,  on  which  all  can 
rest  even  as  he.  But  Professor  Huxley's 
theory  supplies  no  such  centre.  If  life  were 
really  such  a  game  as  he  describes,  —  if  men 
were  once  convinced  that  they  had  to  do  with 
only  such  a  hidden  chess-player  as  he  pic- 
tures, would  they  not  more  than  ever  be 
driven  inward,  would  not  the  natural  selfish- 
ness be  tenfold  more  concentrated  and  inten- 
sified ? 

To  bring  a  man  near  the  Christian  require- 
ment, to  love  his  neighbor  as  himself,  takes 
the  whole  weight  of  Christian  motive  ;  noth- 
ing less  will  avail.  Assuredly  the  considera- 
tion of  the  evil  consequences  that  will  come 
to  one's  self  from  an  opposite  line  of  conduct, 
—  which  seems  to  be  the  moral  theoiy  rec- 
ognized in  this  lecture,  —  will  be  powerless 
to  do  so.     We  conclude,  therefore,  and  say 


62  THE  SCIENTIFIC  THEORY 

that  the  merely  scientific  view  of  Culture 
will  not  work  for  want  of  a  lever.  It  postu- 
lates as  one  of  its  ingredients  respect  for 
others,  yet  it  provides  no  means  for  securing 
the  presence  of  that  ingredient. 

Again,  another  element  which  it  postulates 
is  "  a  vigorous  will,  the  servant  of  a  tender 
conscience."  Now,  a  tender  conscience,  a 
true  and  quick  sense  of  right,  and  the  habit 
of  obeying  it,  are  not  born  in  men  ready- 
made  and  full  formed.  The  elements,  in- 
deed, of  such  a  conscience  lie  in  all  men,  but 
it  requires  long,  careful,  and  delicate  train- 
ing to  bring  them  to  maturity.  Mr.  Huxley 
has  not  told  us  what  resources  his  theory  sup- 
plies for  maturing  such  a  conscience.  If  the 
world  were  to  come  to  recognize  no  other 
moral  sanctions  than  those  which  utilitarian- 
ism insists  on,  would  its  morality  continue  to 
be  even  as  high  as  it  now  is  ?  I  think  not. 
Certainly  if  men  were  once  convinced  that 
they  were  placed  in  such  a  world  as  Profes- 
sor Huxley  pictures,  —  that  their  relations  to 
its  Ruler  were  such  as  he  describes,  —  a  ten- 
der conscience  would  be  the  last  thing  which 
would  be  engendered  by  such  a  conviction. 
We  know  how  children  grow  up  who  are 


OF  CULTURE.  63 

reared  in  homes  where  no  kindness  is,  but 
where  the  only  rule  is  a  word  and  a  blow. 
The  rule  of  terror,  whether  by  parents  or 
teachers,  does  not  generally  result  in  a  ten- 
der conscience,  but  in  hardness,  suspicious- 
ness, deception.  If  the  universe  were 
believed  to  be  such  a  home  or  school  on  a 
larger  scale,  would  the  result  be  different  ? 
In  other  words,  would  a  tender  conscience 
be  produced  by  the  mere  study  of  the  laws  of 
the  game  ? 

But  again,  let  us  suppose  such  a  conscience 
to  exist,  and  to  be  active  in  a  man.  Such  a 
one,  in  proportion  as  the  moral  nature  in  him 
was  true  and  strong,  would  desire  the  right 
to  prevail  in  his  own  life  and  in  the  life  of  all 
men,  —  the  desire  of  his  heart  would  be  to 
see  the  reign  of  righteousness  established. 
How  would  such  a  man  feel,  what  would  be 
his  position,  confronted  with  the  Hidden 
Player,  who  moves  the  phenomena  of  the 
universe,  in  whose  hand  he  knows  his  own 
life  and  the  life  of  all  men  are  ?  —  the  man 
loving  right,  and  desiring  to  see  it  prevail, 
the  Great  Automaton  with  whom  he  has  to 
do,  being  either  regardless  of  it,  or  affording 
to  men  no  evidence  that  he  does  regard  it. 


64  THE  SC/EVTIFJC   THEORY 

In  such  circumstances  would  not  the  tender 
conscience  be  a  most  inconvenient  posses- 
sion ?  Would  not  he  who  had  it  feel  that 
it  put  him  out  of  harmony  with  the  universe 
in  which  he  was  placed  ?  For  his  best  en- 
deavors would  find  no  sympathy,  no  response 
in  the  purpose  of  Him  who  rules  the  uni- 
verse. What  would  remain  to  such  a  man 
except  either  to  rid  himself  of  this  sensitive 
conscience,  which  he  found  to  be  no  help  but 
rather  a  hindrance  to  successful  playing  of 
the  game,  or  to  desire  to  get  out  of  a  world, 
as  soon  as  may  be,  in  which  the  best  part  of 
his  nature  found  itself  strange  and  out  of 
place. 

But  again,  this  leads  me  to  observe  that 
Professor  Huxley's  theory  either  goes  too  far 
or  not  far  enough,  to  be  consistent.  He 
ouo-ht  either  to  have  excluded  moral  consid- 
erations  entirely,  and  to  have  confined  his 
view  wholly  to  visible  and  tangible  issues  ; 
or,  if  he  once  introduced  moral  elements  into 
his  theory,  these  necessitated  his  going  fur- 
ther. Indeed,  if  we  once  bring  in  the  higher 
or  spiritual  issues  of  the  game,  these  put 
an  end  to  the  aptness  of  the  similitude,  and 
destroy  all  its  illustrative  force.  For  con- 
sider.    Each  move  in  the  game,  that  is,  each 


OF  CULTURE.  Q^ 

human  action,  has  two  sides,  —  a  double  as- 
pect ;  it  has  its  visible  and  tangible  result ; 
it  has  also  its  invisible  and  moral  character.^ 
And  this  last,  though  not  recognized  by  sense, 
and  even  when  wholly  disregarded  by  men, 
still  exists  as  really  as  the  seen  result.  If 
we  regard  the  moves  solely  in  their  first  as- 
pect, a  man  may  contrive  so  to  play  the 
game  of  life  as  to  secure  a  large  amount  of 
visible  success,  to  get  for  himself  most  of  the 
good  things  of  this  world,  health,  riches,  rep- 
utation of  a  sort,  long  life,  Avithout  any  very 
tender  conscience.  To  do  this  requires  only 
worldty  wisdom,  only  an  average  stock  of 
market  morality.  For  this  kind  of  success  a 
higher,  more  sensitive  morality  is  so  far  from 
being  necessary  that  it  is  actually  a  hin- 
drance. But  look  at  the  moves  on  their 
spiritual  side,  weigh  success  in  a  moral  bal- 
ance, and  our  whole  estimate  is  chano-ed. 
He  who  is  soonest  checkmated,  he  who, 
judging  by  what  is  seen  merely,  comes  by 
the  earliest,  most  disastrous  defeat,  may  in 
reality  have  won  the  highest  moral  victory. 
Such  are  they  who  in  each  age  have  jeop- 
arded their  lives  for  the  truth,  those  who 
have  been  willing  to  lose  life  that  they  might 

1  Note  V. 
5 


66  THE  SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

find  it,  who  against  the  world  have  stood  for 
right,  and  in  that  contest  have  sacrificed 
themselves,  and  by  that  sacrifice  have  made 
all  future  generations  their  debtors.  They 
were  losers,  indeed,  of  the  visible  game,  but 
they  were  winners  of  the  invisible  and 
spiritual  one.  They  had  for  their  reward 
not  what  the  world  calls  success,  but  the 
sense  that  they  were  servants  of  the  truth, 
doers  of  the  right,  and  that  in  doing  it  they 
had  the  approval  and  sympathy  of  Him  with 
whom 

"  A  noble  aim, 
Faithfully  kept,  is  as  a  noble  deed, 
In  whose  pure  sight  all  virtue  doth  succeed." 

This  view  of  things,  however,  takes  into  ac- 
count a  fact  which  Mr.  Huxley  has  failed  to 
recognize,  that  there  is  an  open  path  between 
the  soul  and  God.  The  thought  of  this  re- 
lation, the  sense  of  His  approval,  forms  no 
part  of  the  success  which  the  mere  worldly 
player  aims  at.  But  other  men  of  finer 
spirit  have,  in  the  very  crisis  of  earthly  fail- 
ure, felt  the  sense  of  this  approval  to  have 
been  an  over-payment  for  all  they  suffered. 

Indeed,  the  longer  we  reflect  on  the  aim 
which  Professor  Huxley's  theory  assigns  to 
human  existence,  the  more  will  it  be  seen  te 


OF  CULTURE.  67 

contradict,  I  will  not  say  the  best  aspirations, 
but  the  most  indubitable  facts  of  man's  liigher 
nature.  If  life  were  indeed  nothing  more 
than  such  a  game,  who  would  be  truly  reck- 
oned the  most  successful  players  ?  Not  the 
select  spirits  of  the  race,  but  the  men  of 
merely  average  morality,  those  whose  guide 
in  life  was  mere  prudence,  a  well-calculated 
regard  to  self-interest;  while  the  nobler 
spirits,  those  who  sought  to  raise  themselves 
and  others  to  purer  heights  of  being,  would 
find  that  they  were  mere  irrelevant  creatures. 
All  that  was  best  and  purest  in  them  would 
be  objectless,  an  anomaly  and  disturbance, 
in  such  a  universe.  For  it  would  contain 
nothing  which  could  so  much  as  warrant 
their  finer  perceptions  to  exist.  Or  again, 
look  at  this  other  fact,  or  perhaps  it  is  the 
same  fact  put  in  another  light :  there  is  at 
the  core  of  all  men  something  which  the 
whole  world  of  nature,  of  science  and  of  art, 
is  inadequate  to  fill.  And  this  part  of  man  is 
no  mere  adjunct  of  his  nature,  but  his  very, 
most  permanent,  highest  self.  What  this 
i.imost  personality  craves  is  sympathy  with 
something  like  itself,  yet  high  above  it,  —  a 
will  consubstantial  with  our  better  will,  yet 
transcending,  supporting,  controlling  it.    Thig 


68  THE  SCIENTIFIC  THEORY 

longing  is,  I  believe,  latent  in  all  men,  though 
they  may  not  be  aware  of  it.  But  in  the 
best  men  it  not  only  exists  in  latency,  but 
is  paramount,  —  the  animating  principle  of 
their  lives.  Of  them  that  ancient  word  is 
literally  true,  "  their  soul  is  athirst  for  God." 
The  desire  to  have  their  will  conformed  to 
His  will,  the  hope  that  they  shall  yet  be 
brought  into  perfect  sympathy  with  Him,  is 
what  in  their  estimate  makes  the  chief  P'ood 
of  existence.  They  believed  that  they  could 
know  something  of  the  character  of  God, 
and  that  they  might  reasonably  aspire  to 
grow  in  likeness  to  that  character.  This  be- 
lief has  been  the  root  out  of  which  has  grown, 
I  will  not  say  all,  but  certainly  much  of,  the 
finest  flower  of  morality  that  has  bloomed  on 
earth.  It  is  not  easy  to  believe  that  what 
w^as  so  true  and  excellent  had  its  root  in  a 
delusion  ;  yet  tliis  is  the  conclusion  to  which 
the  chess-playing  theory,  if  true,  would 
force  us. 

But  there  is  a  further  fact  regarding  these 
men  which  we  must  not  pass  over :  they  have 
left  it  on  record  that  their  seeking  to  know 
God  and  find  rest  in  Him  was  not  in  vain, 
but   that    in   proportion    as    they  sought    in 


OF  CULTURE.  69 

singleness  of  will  to  know  Him,  not  with  the 
understanding  only,  but  with  their  whole 
spirit,  they  did  really  grow  in  that  knowledge. 
They  have  told  us  that,  darkly  though  they 
here  saw,  and  imperfectly,  yet  the  vision 
they  had  was  better  than  anything  else  they 
knew  of,  that  compared  with  it  earthly  suc- 
cess and  merely  secular  knowledge  seemed 
to  them  of  but  little  moment.  And  as  to 
the  laws  of  nature,  these,  they  have  told  us, 
had  for  them  a  new  meaning  and  a  higher 
value  when  they  saw  in  them  a  discipline 
leading  up  to  the  knowledge  of  Him  who 
ordained  them,  and  as  being  in  their  order 
and  marvelous  adaptations  a  reflection  of 
His  wisdom  and  will. 

This  is  the  witness  they  gave  of  them- 
selves, and  the  lives  they  lived  and  the 
works  they  did  confirm  that  witness.  Their 
lives  and  deeds,  making  allowance  for  human 
infirmity,  were  in  keeping  with  what  they 
declared  respecting  themselves.  With  rea- 
son, I  think,  we  may  trust  them,  when  they 
add  that  the  things  they  did  on  earth  they 
were  enabled  to  do  by  a  strength  which  was 
not  of  themselves,  but  which,  when  they 
sought  it  from  a  source  above  themselves, 
they  found. 


70  THE  SCIENTIFIC  THEORY 

My  examination  of  the  theory  which  has 
to-day  engaged  ns  has  led  me  to  observe  two 
things ;  — 

Firsts  That  of  the  moral  elements  of  hu- 
man nature  which  that  theory  postulates,  it 
gives  no  sufficient  account ;  it  provides  noth- 
ing which  shall  insure  their  presence. 

Secondly^  That  it  leaves  out  facts  of  man's 
nature  which  are  as  certain,  though  it  may  be 
not  so  apparent,  as  gravitation,  or  any  other 
fact  which  science  reg-isters.  These  facts  are 
indubitable ;  and  the  truly  scientific  spirit 
would  lead  man  to  give  heed  to  them,  and 
ask  what  they  really  mean.  The  spiritual 
facts  of  human  nature  to  which  I  have  ad- 
verted, no  doubt  imply,  as  their  support, 
other  facts  which  are  above  nature,  —  an 
outcoming  of  the  Divine  will  in  a  special 
way,  manifesting  itself  among  the  phenomena 
it  has  made,  for  the  purpose  of  reaching  the 
human  wills  which  are  dependent  on  it.  But 
this,  and  all  the  wonderful  economy  it  im- 
plies, I  have  refrained  from  speaking  of  to- 
day, that  I  might  fix  attention  all  the  more 
clearly  on  those  moral  facts  which  are  part 
of  our  own  exp  erience,  but  which  are  apt  to 
be  disregarded  in  comparison  with  other 
facts  more  obvious,  but  not  more  real. 


OF   CULTURE,  71 

In  conclusion,  let  me  note  a  mental  bias 
against  which  persons,  both  of  scientific  and 
metaphysical  turn,  do  well  to  be  on  their 
guard.  Their  habits  of  inquiry  sometimes 
lead  them  to  demand,  in  proof  of  things 
spiritual,  a  kind  of  evidence  which  the  sub- 
ject does  not  admit,  and  to  be  insensible  to 
the  kind  of  evidence  which  it  does  admit. 
Habits  of  scientific  investigation  are  excep- 
tional, and  must  always  be  confined  to  a  few. 
Christianity  is  meant  for  all  men.  It  makes 
its  appeal,  not  to  that  in  which  men  dlifer, 
but  to  that  which  tliey  have  in  common,  -^  to 
those  primary  instincts,  sentiments,  judg- 
ments which  belong  to  all  men  as  men. 
Therefore  it  is  no  unreasonable  demand  to 
make,  that  the  man  of  science,  when  judging 
of  the  things  of  the  spirit,  shall  leave  his  soh- 
tary  eminence,  and  place  himself  among  the 
sympathies  and  needs  which  he  shares  with 
all  men,  and  judge  of  the  claim  which  religion 
makes  on  him,  not  from  the  exceptional 
point  of  view  which  he  shares  only  with  a 
few,  but  from  that  ground  which  he  occupies 
in  common  with  his  poorest,  least  scientific 
brothers. 

In  asking:  this  we  are  not  asking  that  he 
should  place  his  higher  faculty  in  abeyance, 


72  THE  SCIENTIFIC   THEORY 

and  employ  a  lower  in  order  to  weigh  and 
accept  religious  truth.  The  logical  or  scien- 
tific faculty,  that  by  which  we  discern  logical, 
mathematical,  or  scientific  relations,  is  not 
the  hicrhest  exercise  of  reason.  The  knowl- 
edire  of  the  hio-hest  thino-s,  those  which  most 
deeply  concern  us,  is  not  attained  by  mere 
intellect,  but  by  the  harmonious  action  of  un- 
derstanding, imagination,  feeling,  conscience, 
will,  —  that  is,  of  the  whole  man.  This  is  rea- 
son in  its  highest  exercise,  intelligence  raised 
to  its  highest  power ;  and  it  is  to  this  exer- 
cise of  reason  we  are  called  in  apprehending 
the  things  of  God. 

It  is  well  that  we  should  be  convinced,  on 
rational  grounds,  that  science  simply  as  sci- 
ence can  never  reach  God.  To  him  who 
insists  on  a  purely  scientific  solution  of  the 
problem  of  man's  life  and  destiny,  and  who 
will  accept  no  other,  there  is  no  solution; 
and  for  this  reason  :  the  highest  concerns  of 
humanity,  the  greatest  objects  with  which 
the  soul  has  to  do,  cannot  even  be  appre- 
hended by  the  scientific  faculty.  If  appre- 
hended at  all,  it  must  be  by  the  exercise  of 
quite  another  side  of  our  being  than  that  which 
science  calls  into  play.  "  No  telescope  will 
enable  us  to  see  God.     No  finest  microscope 


OF   CULTURE.  73 

will  make  Him  visible,  in  the  act  of  working 
No  chemistry,  no  study  of  physical  forces,  no 
search  after  the  one  primary  force,  can  bring 
us  one  '  hand-breadth  nearer  God.'  Science 
m  the  abeyance  of  our  spiritual  nature  at- 
tains not  to  God.  No  scientific  study  of  the 
phenomena  which  imply  a  reign  of  law  could 
ever  have  issued  in  the  discovery  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  ;  but  neither  can  it  issue  in 
any  discovery  that  contradicts  that  kingdom." 
These  are  the  words  of  Dr.  M'Leod  Camp- 
bell, whose  writings  I  have  found  peculiarly 
suggestive  on  the  questions  I  have  been  dis- 
cussing. 

Therefore  it  is  of  no  use  —  indeed,  it  is  a 
grave  error  —  when  those  who  contend  for 
the  religious  view  of  the  world  attempt  to 
prove  to  men  of  science,  as  if  found  in  sci- 
ence, that  which  merely  scientific  faculty  will 
never  find  there,  but  which  has  been  brought 
thither  by  their  faith.  Indeed,  scientific 
men,  who  are  also  religious,  will  be  the  first 
to  acknowledge  that  their  faith  in  God  they 
did  not  get  from  science,  but  from  quite 
another  source  ;  although  this  faith,  when  ^ 
once  possessed,  invested  with  a  new  meaning, 
and  illumined  with  a  higher  light,  all  that 
science  taught  them. 


LECTUKE  m. 

THE   LITERARY  THEORY  OF   CULTURE, 

A  TRUE  poet  and  brilliant  critic  of  the 
present  time,  admired  by  all  for  his  fine  and 
cultivated  genius,  and  to  me  endeared  by 
never-fading  memories  of  early  companion- 
ship, has  identified  his  name  with  a  very 
different  view  of  culture  from  that  which  I 
brought  before  you  the  last  time  I  addressed 
you.  If  Professor  Huxley's  is  the  exclu- 
sively scientific  view  of  culture,  Mr.  Arnold's 
may  be  called  the  literary  or  aesthetic  one. 
In  discussing  the  former  theory,  I  attempted 
to  examine  it  in  the  light  of  facts,  and  to 
avoid  applying  to  it  any  words  which  its  au- 
thor might  disown.  For  mere  appeal  to 
popular  prejudice  should  have  no  place  in 
discussions  about  truth,  and  he  who  has  re- 
course to  that  weapon  in  so  far  -weakens  the 
cause  he  advocates.  If,  however,  I  was  con- 
strained to  call  attention  to  some  not  unim- 
portant facts  of  human  nature  which  that 
theory  fails  to  account  for,  this  should  be  re- 


THE  LITERARY  THEORY  OF  CULTURE.   75 

garded  not  as  appeal  to  unreasoning  preju- 
dice, but  as  a  statement  of  omitted  facts. 
But  whatever  might  be  said  of  Professor 
Huxley's  view,  as  leaving  out  of  sight  the 
spiritual  capacities  and  needs  of  man,  the 
same  objection  cannot  equally  be  urged 
against  Mr.  Arnold's  theory  of  culture.  He 
fully  recognizes  religion  as  an  element,  and 
a  very  important  one,  in  his  theory  ;  only  we 
may  see  cause  to  differ  from  him  in  the  place 
which  he  assigns  to  it.  Though  I  believe 
Mr.  Arnold's  theory  to  be  defective  when 
taken  as  a  total  philosophy  of  life,  yet  so 
large-minded  and  generous  are  the  views  it 
exhibits,  so  high  and  refined  are  the  motives 
it  urges  for  self-improvement,  that  I  believe 
no  one  can  seriously  and  candidly  consider 
what  he  says  without  deriving  good  from  it. 
As  a  recent  writer  has  truly  said,  —  "  The 
author  of  this  theory  deserves  much  praise 
for  having  brought  the  subject  before  men's 
minds,  and  forced  a  little  unwilling  examina- 
tion on  the  '  self-complacent  but  very  uncul- 
tured British  public' " 

Many  who  now  hear  me  may  have  proba- 
bly read  in  Mr.  Arnold's  several  works  all 
his  pleadings  for  culture.     To  these  the  re- 


76  THE  LITERARY    THEORY 

capitulation  of  his  views  which  I  shall  give 
may  be  somewhat  tedious,  but  I  hope  those 
who  know  his  writings  will  bear  with  me 
while  I  briefly  go  over  his  views,  for  the  sake 
of  those  of  my  hearers  who  may  be  less  ac- 
quainted with  them. 

Those  who  were  present  at  my  first  lec- 
ture may  remember  that  I  tried  to  describe 
what  is  meant  by  culture.  That  description 
was  not  identical  with  the  one  I  have  now  to 
give,  but,  though  different  in  form,  the  two 
will  not,  I  believe,  conflict. 

In  Mr.  Arnold's  view,  the  aim  of  culture 
is  not  merely  to  render  an  intelligent  being 
more  intelligent,  to  improve  our  capacities  to 
the  uttermost,  but,  in  words  which  he  bor- 
rows from  Bishop  Wilson,  "  to  make  reason 
and  the  kingdom  of  God  prevail."  It  is  im- 
pelled not  merely  by  the  scientific  desire  to 
see  things  as  they  are,  but  rather  by  the 
moral  endeavor  to  know  more  and  more  the 
universal  order,  which  seems  intended  in  the 
world,  that  we  may  conform  to  it  ourselves, 
and  make  others  conform  to  it ;  in  short,  that 
we  may  help  to  make  the  will  of  God  pre- 
vail in  us  and  around  i^.     In  this,  he  says, 


OF   CULTURE.  1^ 

is  seen  the  moral,  social,  beneficent  nature 
of  culture,  that  while  it  seeks  the  best  knowl 
edge,  the  highest  science  that  is  to  be  had,  it 
seeks  them  in  order  to  make   them  tell  on 
human  life  and  character. 

The  aim  of  culture,  therefore,  is  the  per- 
fection of  our  human  nature  on  all  its  sides, 
in  all  its  capacities.  First,  it  tries  to  deter- 
mine in  what  this  perfection  consists,  and,  in 
order  to  solve  this  question,  it  consults  the 
manifold  human  experience  that  has  ex- 
pressed itself  in  such  diverse  ways,  through- 
out science,  poetry,  philosophy,  history,  as 
well  as  throuMi  relimon. 

And  the  conclusion  which  culture  reaches 
is,  Mr.  Arnold  holds,  in  harmony  with  the 
voice  of  religion.  For  it  places  human  per- 
fection in  an  internal  condition  of  soul,  in  the 
growth  and  predominance  of  our  humanity 
proper,  as  distinguished  from  our  animality. 

Again,  it  does  not  rest  content  with  any 
condition  of  soul,  however  excellent,  but 
presses  ever  onwards  to  an  ampler  growth, 
to  a  gradual  harmonious  expansion  of  those 
gifts  of  thought  and  feeling  which  make  the 
peculiar  dignity,  wealth  and  happiness  of  hu- 
man nature.  Not  a  having  and  resting,  but 
a  growing  and  becoming,  is  the  true  charac- 
ter of  perfection  as  culture  conceives  it. 


78  THE  LITERARY  THEORY 

Again,  in  virtue  of  that  bond  of  brother 
hood  which  binds  all  men  to  each  other, 
whether  they  will  it  or  not,  this  perfection 
cannot  be  an  isolated  individual  perfection. 
Unless  the  obligation  it  lays  on  each  man  to 
consider  others  as  well  as  himself  is  recog- 
nized, the  perfection  attained  must  be  a 
stunted,  ignoble  one,  far  short  of  true  per- 
fection. 

In  all  these  three  considerations  the  aim 
of  culture,  Mr.  Arnold  thinks,  coincides  with 
the  aim  of  religion. 

Firsts  in  that  it  places  perfection  not  in 
any  external  good,  but  in  an  internal  condi- 
tion of  soul,  — "  The  kingdom  of  God  is 
within  you." 

Secondly^  in  that  it  sets  before  men  a  con- 
dition not  of  having  and  resting,  but  of  grow- 
ing and  becoming  as  the  true  aim,  —  "  For- 
ofettino:  those  things  which  are  behind,  and 
reaching  forth  unto  those  things  which  are 
before." 

Thirdly^  in  that  it  holds  that  a  man's  per- 
fection cannot  be  self-contained,  but  must 
embrace  the  good  of  others  equally  with  his 
})wn,  and  as  the  very  condition  of  his  own,  — 
"  Look  not  every  man  on  his  own  things, 
but  ever;y  man  also  on  the  things  of  others." 


OF  CULTURE.  79 

These  three  notes  belong  alike  to  the  per- 
fection which  culture  aims  at,  and  to  that 
which  religion  enjoins. 

But  there  is  a  fourth  note  of  perfection  as 
conceived  by  culture,  in  which,  as  Mr.  Ar- 
nold thinks,  it  transcends  the  aim  of  religion. 
"  As  an  harmonious  expansion  of  all  the 
powers  which  make  the  beauty  and  worth 
of  human  nature,"  Mr.  Arnold  holds  that  it 
"  goes  beyond  religion,  as  religion  is  gen- 
erally conceived  among  us."  For  religion, 
Mr.  Arnold  thinks,  aims  at  the  cultivation  of 
some,  and  these,  no  doubt,  the  highest  pow- 
ers of  the  soul,  at  the  expense,  even  at  the 
sacrifice,  of  other  powers,  which  it  regards  as 
lower.  So  it  falls  short  of  that  many-sided, 
even-balanced,  all-embracing,  totality  of  de- 
velopment which  is  the  aim  of  the  highest 
culture. 

Mark  well  this  point,  for,  though  I  cannot 
stop  to  discuss  it  now,  I  must  return  to  it 
after  I  have  set  before  you  Mr.  Arnold's 
view  in  its  further  bearings. 

After  insisting,  then,  that  culture  is  the 
study  of  perfection,  harmonious,  all-embrac- 
ing, consisting  in  becoming  something  rather 


80  THE  LITERARY  THEORY 

than  in  having  something,  in  an  inward  con- 
dition of  soul  rather  than  in  any  outward  cir- 
cumstances, Mr.  Arnold  goes  on  to  show  how 
hard  a  battle  culture  has  to  fight  in  this 
country,  with  how  many  of  our  strongest 
tendencies,  our  most  deep-rooted  characteris- 
tics, it  comes  into  direct,  even  violent  collis- 
ion. The  prominence  culture  gives  to  the 
soul,  the  inward  and  spiritual  condition,  as 
transcending  all  outward  goods  put  together, 
comes  into  conflict  with  our  worship  of  a  me- 
chanical and  material  civilization.  The  so- 
cial aspirations  it  calls  forth  for  the  general 
elevation  of  the  human  family  conflict  with 
our  intense  individualism,  our  "  every  man 
for  himself."  The  totality  of  its  aim,  the 
harmonious  expansion  of  all  human  capaci- 
ties, contradicts  our  inveterate  one-sidedness, 
our  absorption  each  in  his  own  one  pursuit. 
It  conflicts,  above  all,  with  the  tendency  so 
strong  in  us  to  worship  the  means  and  to  for- 
get the  ends  of  life. 

Everywhere,  as  he  looks  around  him,  Mr. 
Arnold  sees  this  great  British  people  chasing 
the  means  of  living  with  unparalleled  energy, 
and  forgetting  the  inward  things  of  our  be- 
ing, which  alone  give  these  means  their  value. 
We   are,   in   fact,  idol- worshippers   without 


OF   CULTURE.  81 

knowing  it.  We  worship  freedom,  the  right 
to  do  every  man  as  he  chooses,  careless 
whether  the  thing  we  choose  to  do  be  good 
or  not.  We  worship  railroads,  steam,  coal, 
as  if  the^e  made  a  nation's  greatness,  forget- 
ting that  — 

"  by  the  soul 
Only  the  nations  shall  be  great  and  free." 

We  worship  wealth,  as  men  have  done  in  all 
ages,  in  spite  of  the  voices  of  all  the  wise, 
only  perhaps  never  before  in  the  world's 
history  with  such  unanimity,  such  strength 
and  consistency  of  devotion,  as  at  this  hour, 
in  this  land.  I  must  quote  the  words  in 
which  he  makes  Culture  address  the  mam- 
mon-worshippers, those  who  have  either  got- 
ten wealth,  or,  being  hot  in  the  pursuit  of 
it,  regard  wealth  and  welfare  as  synony- 
mous :  — 

"  Consider,"  he  makes  Culture  say,  "  these 
people,  their  way  of  life,  their  habits,  their 
manners,  the  very  tones  of  their  voice  ;  look 
at  them  attentively,  observe  the  literature 
they  read  (if  they  read  any),  the  things  that 
give  them  pleasure,  the  words  which  come 
forth  from  their  mouths,  the  thoughts  which 
make  the  furniture  of  their  minds  ;  would 
any  amount  of  wealth  be  worth  hav^ing  with 


82  THE  LITERARY   THEORY 

the  condition  that  one  was  to  become  like 
these  people  by  having  it  ?  Thus,"  he  says, 
"  culture  begets  a  dissatisfaction  which  is  of 
the  highest  possible  value  in  stemming  the 
common  tide  of  men's  thoughts  in  a  wealthy 
and  industrious  community,  and  which  saves 
the  future,  as  one  may  hope,  from  being 
wholly  materiaHzed  and  vulgarized,  if  it  can- 
not save  the  present."  Against  all  this  ab- 
sorbing faith  in  machinery,  whatever  form  it 
takes,  whether  faith  in  wealth  or  in  liberty, 
used  or  abused,  or  in  coals  and  railroads,  or 
in  bodily  health  and  vigor,  or  in  population, 
Mr.  Arnold  lifts  up  an  earnest  protest. 

It  is  an  old  lesson,  but  one  which  each  age 
forgets  and  needs  to  be  taught  anew :  men 
forgetting  the  inward  and  spiritual  goods, 
and  setting  their  hope  on  the  outward  and 
material  ones.  Against  this  all  the  wise  of 
the  earth  have,  each  one  in  his  day,  cried 
aloud,  —  the  philosophers,  moralists,  and  sat- 
irists of  Greece  and  Rome,  Plato,  Epictetus, 
Seneca,  and  Juvenal,  not  less  than  Hebrew 
prophets  and  Christian  apostles,  up  to  that 
Divine  voice  which  said,  "  What  shall  it 
profit  a  man,  if  he  gain  the  whole  world,  and 
lose  his  own  soul  ?  " 

This  same  old  lesson  Mr.  Arnold  repeats, 


OF   CULTURE.  83 

but  in  modern  language,  and  turns  against 
the  shapes  of  idol-worship,  which  he  sees 
everywhere  around  him. 

In  contrast,  then,  to  all  the  grosser  inter- 
ests that  absorb  us,  he  pleads  for  a  mental 
and  spiritual  perfection,  which  has  two  sides, 
or  prominent  notes,  beauty  and  intelligence, 
or,  borrowing  words  which  Swift  first  used, 
and  which,  since  Mr.  Arnold  reproduced 
them,  have  become  proverbial,  "  Sweetness 
and  Light,"  —  "  An  inward  and  spiritual  ac- 
tivity having  for  its  characters  increased 
sweetness,  increased  light,  increased  life,  in- 
creased sympathy." 

The  age  of  the  world  in  which  these  two, 
"  sweetness  and  light,"  were  preeminently 
combined  was,  Mr.  Arnold  thinks,  the  best 
age  of  Athens  —  that  which  is  represented 
in  the  poetry  of  Sophocles,  in  whom  "  the 
idea  of  beauty  and  a  full-developed  human- 
itv  "  took  to  itself  a  relio-ious  and  devout 
energy,  in  the  strength  of  which  it  worked. 
But  this  was  but  for  a  moment  of  time,  when 
the  Athenian  mind  touched  its  acme.  It 
was  a  hint  of  what  micrht  be  when  the  world 
was  ripe  for  it,  rather  than  a  condition  which 
could  then  continue.    In  our  own  countrymen, 


84  THE  LITERARY  THEORY 

Mr.  Arnold  believes,  partly  from  the  tough- 
ness and  earnestness  of  the  Saxon  nature, 
partly  from  the  predominance  in  our  edu- 
cation of  the  Hebrew  teaching,  the  moral 
and  religious  element  has  been  drawn  out 
too  exclusively.  There  is  amono;  us  an  en- 
tire  want  of  the  idea  of  beauty,  harmony, 
and  completely  rounded  human  excellence. 
These  ideas  are  either  unknown  to  us,  or 
entirely  misapprehended. 

Mr.  Arnold  then  goes  on  to  contrast  his 
idea  of  a  perfectly  and  harmoniously  devel- 
oped human  nature  with  the  idea  set  up  by 
Puritanism,  and  prevalent  amid  our  modern 
multifarious  churches.  He  grants  that  the 
church  organizations  have  done  much. 
They  have  greatly  helped  to  subdue  the 
grosser  animalities,  —  they  have  made  life 
orderly,  moral,  serious.  But  when  we  go 
beyond  this,  and  look  at  the  standards  of  per- 
fection which  these  religious  organizations 
have  held  up,  he  finds  them  poor  and  miser- 
able, starving  more  than  a  half,  and  that  the 
finest  part  of  human  nature.  He  turns  to 
modern  religious  life,  as  imaged  in  the  Non- 
coriformist  or  some  other  religious  newspaper 
of  the  hour,  and  asks,  What  do  we  find  there  ? 
''  A  life  of  jealousy  of  other  churches,  dis- 


OF    CULTURE.  85 

putes,  tea  meetings,  openings  of  chapels,  ser- 
mons." And  then  he  exclaims,  "  Think  of 
this  as  an  ideal  of  human  life,  completing 
itself  on  all  sides,  and  aspiring  with  all  its  or- 
gans after  sweetness,  light,  and  perfection  !  " 
"  How,"  he  asks,  "  is  the  ideal  of  a  life  so 
unlovely,  so  unattractive,  so  narrow,  so  far 
removed  from  a  true  and  satisfying  ideal  of 
human  perfection,  ....  to  conquer 
and  transform  all  the  vice  and  hideousness  " 
that  we  see  around  us  ?  "  Indeed,  the  strong- 
est plea  for  the  study  of  perfection  as  pur- 
sued by  culture,  the  clearest  proof  of  the  act- 
ual inadequacy  of  the  idea  of  perfection  held 
by  the  religious  organizations,  —  expressing, 
as  I  have  said,  the  most  wide-spread  effort 
which  the  human  race  has  yet  made  after 
perfection,  —  is  to  be  found  in  the  state  of  our 
life  and  society  with  these  in  possession  of  it, 
and  having  been  in  possession  of  it  I  know 
not  how  many  years.  We  are  all  of  us  in- 
cluded in  some  religious  organization  or  other ; 
we  all  call  ourselves,  in  the  sublime  and  as- 
piring language  of  religion,  children  of  God. 
Children  of  God,  —  it  is  an  immense  preten- 
sion I  —  and  how  are  we  to  justify  it  ?  By 
the  works  which  we  do,  and  the  words  which 
we  speak.     And  the  work  which  we  collect- 


86  THE  LITERARY  THEORY 

ive  children  of  God  do,  our  grand  centre  of 
life,  our  city,  is  London  !  London,  with  itg 
unutterable  external  hideousness,  and  with 
Its  internal  canker,  puhlice  egestas^  privatim 
opulentia^  unequaled  in  the  world  !  " 

These  are  severe  words,  yet  they  have  a 
side  of  truth  in  them.  They  portray  our  act- 
ual state  so  truly,  that,  though  they  may  not 
be  the  whole  truth,  it  is  well  we  should  re- 
member them,  for  they  cannot  be  altogether 
gainsaid. 

I  have  now  done  with  the  exposition  of 
Mr.  Arnold's  theory.  Before  going  on  to 
note  what  seems  to  me  to  be  its  radical  de- 
fect, let  me  first  draw  attention  to  two  of  its 
most  prominent  merits. 

His  pleading  for  a  perfection  which  con- 
sists in  a  condition  of  soul,  evenly  and  har- 
moniously developed,  is  but  a  new  form  of 
saying,  "  A  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the 
abundance  of  the  things  which  he  possesseth." 
You  will  say,  perhaps.  Is  not  this  a  very  old 
truth?  Why  make  such  ado  about  it,  as 
though  it  were  a  new  discovery  ?  Has  it  not 
been  expressed  far  more  strongly  in  the  Bible 
than  by  Mr.  Arnold  ?  True,  it  is  an  old 
truth,  and  we  all  know  it  is  in  the    Bible. 


OF   CULTURE.  87 

But  it  IS  just  these  old  truths  which  we  know 
so  well  by  the  ear,  but  so  little  with  the  heart, 
that  need  to  be  reiterated  to  each  age  in  the 
new  language  which  it  speaks.  The  deepest 
truths  are  always  becoming  commonplaces, 
till  they  are  revivified  by  thought.  And 
they  are  true  thinkers  and  benefactors  of 
their  kind  who,  having  thought  them  over 
once  more,  and  passed  them  through  the 
alembic  of  their  own  hearts,  bring  them  forth 
fresh-minded,  and  make  them  tell  anew  on 
their  generation.  And  of  all  the  old  prov- 
erbs that  this  age  needs  applied  to  it,  none  is 
more  needed  than  that  which  Mr.  Arnold 
has  proclaimed  so  forcibly. 

Again,  as  to  the  defects  which  Mr.  Ar- 
nold charges  against  our  many  and  divided 
religious  organizations,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  the  moral  and  social  results  we  see 
around  us  are  far  from  satisfactory.  In  this 
state  of  things  we  cannot  afford  to  neglect 
whatever  aid  that  culture  or  any  other  power 
offers,  —  to  ignore  those  sides  and  forces  of 
human  nature  which,  if  called  into  play, 
might  render  our  ideal  at  once  more  com- 
plete and  more  efficient.  There  is  much  to 
excuse  the  complaints  which  highly  educated 
men   are  apt  to  make,  that  religious   minds 


88  THE  LITERARY    THEORY 

have  often  been  satisfied  with  a  very  partia 
and  narrow  development  of  humanity,  such 
as  does  not  satisfy,  and  ought  not  to  satisfy, 
thoughtful  and  cultivated  men.  The  wise 
and  truly  religious  thing  to  do  is  not  to  get 
angry  at  such  criticisms,  and  give  them  bad 
names,  but  to  be  candid,  and  listen  to  those 
who  tell  us  of  our  shortcomings,  —  try  to  see 
what  justice  there  may  be  in  them,  and  to 
turn  whatever  truth  they  may  contain  to 
good  account, 

Mr.  Arnold  sets  before  us  a  lofty  aim,  — 
he  has  bid  us  seek  our  good  in  something  un- 
seen, in  a  spiritual  energy.  In  doing  this  he 
has  done  well.  But  I  must  hold  that  he  has 
erred  in  his  estimate  of  what  that  spiritual 
energy  is,  and  he  has  missed,  I  think,  the 
true  source  from  which  it  is  to  be  mainly  de- 
rived. For  in  his  account  of  it  he  has  placed 
that  as  primary  which  is  secondary  and  sub- 
ordinate, and  made  that  secondary  which  by 
right  ought  to  be  supreme. 

You  will  remember  that  when  describing 
his  idea  of  the  perfection  to  be  aimed  at,  he 
makes  religion  one  factor  in  it,  —  an  impor- 
tant and  powerful  factor  no  doubt,  still  but 
one  element  out  of  several,  and  that  not  nee- 


OF   CULTURE.  8S 

essarily  the  ruling  element,  but  a  means  to- 
wards an  end,  higher,  more  supreme,  more 
all-embracing  than  itself.  The  end  was  a 
many-sided,  harmonious  development  of  hu- 
man nature,  and  to  this  end  religion  was  only 
an  important  means. 

In  thus  assigning  to  religion  a  secondary, 
however  important,  place,  this  theory,  as  I 
conceive,  if  consistently  acted  on,  would  an- 
nihilate religion.  There  are  things  which 
are  either  ends  in  themselves  or  they  are 
nothing;  and  such,  I  conceive,  religion  is. 
It  either  is  supreme,  a  good  in  itself  and  for 
its  own  sake,  or  it  is  not  at  all.  The  first 
and  great  commandment  must  either  be  so 
set  before  us  as  to  be  obeyed,  entered  into, 
in  and  for  itself,  without  any  ulterior  view, 
or  it  cannot  be  obeyed  at  all.  It  cannot  be 
made  subservient  to  any  ulterior  purpose. 
And  herein  is  instanced  *'  a  remarkable  law 
of  ethics,  which  is  well  known  to  all  who 
have  given  their  minds  to  the  subject."  I 
shall  give  it  in  the  words  of  one  who  has  ex- 
pressed it  so  well  in  his  own  unequaled  lan- 
guage that  it  has  been  proposed  to  name  it 
after  him.  Dr.  Newman's  law :  —  "  All  vir- 
tue and  goodness  tend  to  make  men  pow- 
erful in  this  world ;  but  they  who  aim  at  the 


90  THE  LITERARY  THEORY 

power  have  not  the  virtue.     Again  :  Virtue 
is  its  own  reward,  and  brings    with    it  the 
truest  and  highest  pleasures  ;  but  they  who 
cultivate  it  for  the  pleasure-sake  are  selfish, 
not  religious,  and  will  never  gain  the  pleas- 
ure, because  they  never  can  have  the  virtue." 
Apply  this  to  the  present  subject.      They 
who  seek  religion  for  culture-sake    are  aes- 
thetic, not  religious,  and  will  never  gain  that 
grace  which  religion  adds  to  culture,  because 
they  never  can  have  the  religion.     To  seek 
religion  for   the   personal  elevation  or  even 
for  the  social  improvement  it  brings,  is  really 
to  fall  from  faith  which  rests  in  God  and  the 
knowledge  of  Him  as  the  ultimate  good,  and 
has  no  by-ends  to  serve.     And  what  do  we 
see  in  actual  life  ?     There  shall  be  two  men, 
one  of  whom  has  started  on  the  road  of  self- 
improvement  from  a  mainly  intellectual  in- 
terest, from  the  love  of  art,  literature,  sci- 
ence, or  from  the  delight  these  give,  but  has 
not  been  actuated  by  a  sense  of  responsibility 
to  a  Hlo-her  than  himself.    The  other  has  be- 
gun  with  some  sense  of  God,  and  of  his  rela- 
tion to  Him,  and  starting  from   this  centre 
has  gone  on  to  add  to  it  all  the  moral  and 
mental  improvement  within  his  reach,  feel- 
ing that,  beside  the  pleasure  these  things  give 


OF   CULTURE.  91 

in  themselves,  he  will  thus  best  fulfill  the 
purpose  of  Him  who  gave  them,  thus  best 
promote  the  good  of  his  fellow-men,  and  at- 
tain the  end  of  his  own  existence.  Which 
of  these  two  will  be  the  hio-hest  man,  in 
which  will  be  gathered  up  the  most  excellent 
graces  of  character,  the  truest  nobility  of 
soul?  You  cannot  doubt  it.  The  sense 
that  a  man  is  servino;  a  Hio;her  than  himself, 
with  a  service  which  will  become  ever  more 
and  more  perfect  freedom,  evokes  more  pro- 
found, more  humbling,  more  exalted  emo- 
tions than  anything  else  in  the  world  can  do. 
The  spirit  of  man  is  an  instrument  which 
cannot  give  out  its  deepest,  finest  tones,  ex- 
cept under  the  immediate  hand  of  the  Divine 
Harmonist.  That  is,  before  it  can  educe  the 
highest  capacities  of  which  human  nature  is 
susceptible,  culture  must  cease  to  be  merely 
culture,  and  pass  over  into  religion.  And 
here  we  see  another  aspect  of  that  great  eth- 
ical law  already  noticed  as  compassing  all 
human  action,  whereby  "  the  abandoning  of 
some  lower  object  in  obedience  to  a  higher 
g.im  is  made  the  very  condition  of  securing 
the  said  lower  object."  According  to  this  law 
it  comes  that  he  will  approach  nearer  to  per- 
fection, or  (since  to  speak  of  perfection  in  such 


92  THE  LITERARY  THEORY 

as  we  are  sounds  like  presumption)  rathei 
let  us  say,  he  will  reach  further,  will  attain 
to  a  truer,  deeper,  more  lovely  humanity, 
who  makes  not  culture,  but  oneness  with  the 
will  of  God,  his  ultimate  aim.  The  ends  of 
culture,  truly  conceived,  are  best  attained  by 
forgetting  culture,  and  aiming  higher.  And 
what  is  this  but  translating  into  modern  and 
less  forcible  language  the  old  words,  whose 
meaning  is  often  greatly  misunderstood, 
*'  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  all 
other  things  will  be  added  unto  you  ?  "  But 
by  seeking  the  other  things  first,  as  we  nat- 
urally do,  we  miss  not  only  the  kingdom  of 
God,  but  those  other  things  also  which  are 
only  truly  attained  by  aiming  beyond  them. 
Another  objection  to  the  theory  we  have 
been  considering  remains  to  be  noted.  Its 
starting-point  is  the  idea  of  perfecting  self; 
and  though,  as  it  gradually  evolves,  it  tries  to 
forget  self,  and  to  include  quite  other  ele- 
ments, yet  it  never  succeeds  in  getting  clear 
of  the  taint  of  self-reference  with  which  it  set 
out.  While  making  this  objection,  I  do  not 
forget  that  Mr.  Arnold,  in  drawing  out  his 
view,  proposes  as  the  end  of  culture  to  make 
reason  and  the  kingdom  of  God  prevail ;  that 
he  sees  clearly,  and  insists  strongly,  that  an 


OF  CULTURE.  93 

isolated  self-culture  is  impossible,  that  we 
cannot  make  progress  towards  perfection 
ourselves,  unless  we  strive  earnestly  to  carry 
our  fellow-men  along  with  us.  Still  may  it 
not  with  justice  be  said  that  these  unselfish 
elements  —  the  desire  for  others'  good,  the 
desire  to  advance  God's  kingdom  on  earth 
—  are  in  this  theory  awakened,  not  simply 
for  their  own  sakes,  not  chiefly  because  they 
are  good  in  themselves,  but  because  they  are 
clearly  discerned  to  be  necessary  to  our  self- 
perfection,  —  elements  apart  from  which  this 
cannot  exist  ?  And  so  it  comes  that  culture, 
though  made  our  end  never  so  earnestly, 
cannot  shelter  a  man  from  thouo-hts  about 
himself,  cannot  free  him  from  that  which  all 
must  feel  to  be  fatal  to  high  character,  — 
continual  self-consciousness.  The  only 
forces  strong  enough  to  do  this  are  great 
truths  which  carry  him  out  of  and  beyond 
himself,  the  things  of  the  spiritual  world 
sought,  not  mainly  because  of  their  reflex  ac- 
tion on  us,  but  for  their  own  sakes,  because 
of  their  own  inherent  worthiness.  There  is 
perhaps  no  truer  sign  that  a  man  is  really 
advancing  than  that  he  is  learning  to  forget 
himself,  that  he  is  losing  the  natural  thoughts 
about  self  in  the  thought  of  One  higher  than 


94  THE  LITERARY   THEORY 

himself,  to  whose  guidance  he  can  commit 
himself  and  all  men.  This  is  no  doubt  a  les- 
son not  quickly  learnt ;  but  there  is  no  help 
to  learnino;  it  in  theories  of  self-culture  which 
exalt  man's  natural  self-seeking  into  a  spe- 
cious and  refined  philosophy  of  life. 

Again,  it  would  seem  that  in  a  world 
made  like  ours.  Culture,  as  Mr.  Arnold  con- 
ceives it,  instead  of  becoming  an  all-embrac- 
ing bond  of  brotherhood,  is  likely  to  be  rather 
a  principle  of  exclusion  and  isolation.  Cul- 
ture such  as  he  pictures  is  at  present  con- 
fessedly the  possession  of  a  very  small  circle. 
Consider,  then,  the  average  powers  of  men, 
the  circumstances  in  which  the  majority 
must  live,  the  physical  wants  that  must  al- 
ways be  uppermost  in  their  thoughts,  and 
say  if  we  can  conceive  that,  even  in  the 
most  advanced  state  of  education  and  civili- 
zation possible,  high  culture  can  become  the 
common  portion  of  the  multitude.  And 
with  the  few  on  a  high  level  of  cultivation, 
the  many,  to  take  the  best,  on  a  much  lower, 
what  is  the  natural  result  ?  Fastidious  ex- 
clusiveness  on  the  part  of  the  former,  which 
is  hardly  human,  certainly  not  Christian. 
Take  any  concourse  of  men,  from  the  House 
of  Commons  down  to  the  humblest  conven- 


OF  CULTURE.  95 

tide,  how  will  the  majority  of  them  appear 
to  eyes  refined  by  elaborate  culture,  but  not 
humanized  by  any  deeper  sentiment  ?  To 
such  an  onlooker  will  not  the  countenances 
of  most  seem  unlovely,  their  manners  repul- 
sive, their  modes  of  thought  commonplace,  — 
it  may  be,  sordid  ?  By  any  such  concourse 
the  man  of  mere  culture  will,  I  think,  feel 
himself  repelled,  not  attracted.  So  it  must 
be,  because  Culture,  being  mainly  a  literary 
and  aesthetic  product,  finds  little  in  the  un- 
lettered multitude  that  is  akin  to  itself.  It 
is,  after  all,  a  dainty  and  divisive  quality, 
and  cannot  reach  to  the  depths  of  humanity. 
To  do  this  takes  some  deeper,  broader,  more 
brotherly  impulse,  one  which  shall  touch  the 
universal  ground  on  which  men  are  one,  not 
that  in  which  they  differ,  —  their  common 
nature,  common  destiny,  the  needs  that  poor 
and  rich  alike  share.  For  this  we  must  look 
elsewhere  than  to  Culture,  however  enlarged. 
The  view  I  have  been  enforcing  will  ap- 
pear more  evident  if  from  abstract  arguments 
we  turn  to  the  actual  lives  of  men.  Take 
any  of  the  highest  examples  of  our  race, 
those  who  have  made  all  future  generations 
their  debtors.  Can  we  imagine  any  of  these 
being    content    to    set    before    themselves, 


96  THE  LITERARY   THEORY 

merely  as  the  end  of  their  endeavors,  such 
an  aim  as  the  harmonious  development  of 
human  nature  ?  A  Goethe  perhaps  might, 
and  if  we  take  him  as  the  highest,  we  will 
take  his  theory  likewise.  Hardly,  I  think, 
Shakespeare,  if  we  can  conceive  of  him  as 
ever  having  set  before  himself  consciously 
any  formal  aim.  But  could  we  imagine  St. 
Paul  doing  so,  or  Augustine,  or  Luther,  or 
such  men  as  Pascal  or  Archbishop  Leighton  ? 
Would  such  a  theory  truly  represent  the 
ends  they  Kved  for,  the  powers  that  actuated 
them,  the  ideal  whence  they  drew  their 
strength  ?  These  men  changed  the  moral 
orbit  of  the  world,  but  by  what  lever  did 
they  change  it  ?  Not  by  seeking  their  own 
perfection,  nor  even  by  making  the  progress 
of  the  race  their  only  aim.  They  found  a 
higher,  more  permanent  world  on  wliich  to 
plant  the  lever  that  was  to  move  this  one. 
They  sought  first  the  advancement  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  and  truth  for  its  own  sake, 
and  they  knew  that  this  embraced  the  true 
good  of  man  and  every  other  good  thing. 

Indeed,  of  Culture  put  in  the  supreme 
place,  it  has  been  well  said  that  it  holds 
forth  a  hope  for  humanity  by  enlightening 
self,  and  not  a  hope  for  humanity  by  dying 


OF   CULTURE.  97 

to  self.  This  last  is  the  hope  which  Chris- 
tianity sets  before  us.  It  teaches,  what  in- 
deed human  experience  in  the  long-run 
teaches  too,  that  man's  chief  good  lies  in 
ceasing  from  the  Individual  Self,  that  he  may 
live  in  a  higher  Personality,  in  whose  pur- 
pose all  the  ends  of  our  true  Personality  are 
secure.  The  sayings  in  the  Gospels  to  this 
effect  will  readily  occur  to  every  one.  Some 
glimpse  of  the  same  truth  had  visited  the 
mind  of  the  speculative  Greek  poet  four 
hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era, 
when  he  said  :  — 

t(s  Oi5e»'  ei  to  ^r]V  fxev  ecrrt  KarOavelv^ 
To  KarOavelv  6e  ^tjv  ; 

"  Who  knoweth  whether  life  may  not  be  death, 
And  death  itself  be  life  ?  " 

There  is  but  one  other  thought  I  would 
submit  to  you.  Those  who  build  their  chief 
hope  for  humanity  on  Culture  rather  than  on 
Relio-ion  would  raise  men  bv  brino;incr  them 
into  contact  and  sympathy  with  whatever  of 
best  and  greatest  the  past  has  produced.  But 
is  not  a  large  portion  of  what  is  best  in  the 
literature  and  the  lives  of  past  generations 
based  on  faith  in  God,  and  on  the  reality  of 
communion  with  Him  as  the  first  and  chief 
good  ?     Would  this  best  any  longer  live  and 


98  THE  LITERARY   THEORY 

grow  in  men  if  you  cut  them  off  from  direct 
access  to  its  fountain-head,  and  confined  them 
to  the  results  wliich  it  has  produced  in  past 
ages,  — if,  in  fact,  you  made  the  object  of  the 
soul's  contemplation  not  God,  but  past  hu- 
manity ?  Are  we  of  these  latter  days  to  be 
content  with  the  results  of  the  communion 
of  others,  and  not  have  direct  access  to  it 
ourselves,  —  to  read  and  admire  the  high 
thoughts  of  a  Kempis,  Pascal,  Leighton,  and 
such  men,  and  not  to  go  on  and  drink  for 
ourselves  from  the  same  living  well-heads 
from  which  they  drank  ?  Not  now,  any 
more  than  in  past  ages,  can  the  most  be 
made  of  human  character,  even  in  this  life, 
till  we  ascend  above  humanity,  — 

''  Unless  above  himself  he  can 
Erect  himself,  how  mean  a  thing  is  man !  " 

I  cannot  close  without  expressing  a  feeling 
which  I  dare  say  has  been  present  to  the 
minds  of  many  here,  as  throughout  this  lec- 
ture they  listened  to  the  oft-repeated  word 
perfection.  Perfection !  the  very  word 
seems  like  mockery  when  applied  to  such  as 
we.  For  how  poor  a  thing  must  any  per- 
fection be  that  is  reached  this  side  the  grave  ! 
Far  truer  is  that  word  of  St.  Augustine,  — 
*'  That  is  the  true    perfection  of  a  man,  to 


OF   CULTURE.  9& 

find  out  his  own  imperfection.'*  Yes,  tho 
highest  perfection  any  one  will  attain  in  this 
life  is  to  be  ever  increasino-ly  sensible  how 
imperfect  he  is.  As  perfection  is  put  for- 
ward in  the  theory  I  have  been  examining, 
one  cannot  but  feel  that  there  is  a  very  in- 
adequate notion  of  the  evil  in  the  human 
heart  that  is  to  be  cured,  and  of  the  nature 
of  the  powers  that  are  needed  to  cope  with 
it.  And  in  this  respect  we  cannot  but  be 
struck  with  how  greatly  Christianity  differs 
from  Culture,  and  differs  only  to  surpass  it : 
its  estimate  of  the  disease  is  so  much  deeper, 
and  the  remedy  to  which  it  turns  so  far 
transcends  all  human  nostrums.  Christianity, 
too,  holds  out  perfection  as  the  goal.  But  in 
doincr  so  its  view  is  not  confined  to  time,  but 
contemplates  an  endless  progression  in  far-on 
ages.  The  perfection  the  Culturists  speak 
of,  if  it  does  not  wholly  exclude  the  other 
life,  seems  to  fix  the  eye  mainly  on  what  can 
be  done  here,  and  not  to  take  much  account 
of  what  is  beyond.  That  was  a  higher  and 
truer  idea  of  perfection  which  Leighton  had  : 
*'  It  is  an  union  with  a  Higher  Good  by  love, 
that  alone  is  endless  perfection.  The  only 
sufficient  object  for  man  must  be  something 
that  adds  to  and  perfects  his  nature,  to  which 


100  THE  LITERARY  THEORY 

he  must  be  united  in  love  ;  somewhat  higher 
than  himself,  yea,  the  highest  of  all,  the 
Father  of  spirits.  That  alone  completes  a 
spirit  and  blesses  it,  —  to  love  Him,  the 
spring  of  spirits." 

To  sum  up  all  that  has  been  said,  the  de- 
fect in  Mr.  Arnold's  theory  is  this  :  It  places 
in  the  second  and  subordinate  place  that 
which  should  be  supreme,  and  elevates  to  the 
position  of  command  a  power  which,  rightly 
understood,  should  be  subordinate  and  minis- 
trant  to  a  higher  than  itself.  The  relation  to 
God  is  first,  this  relation  is  last,  and  Culture 
should  fill  up  the  interspace,  —  Culture,  that 
is,  the  endeavor  to  know  and  use  aright  the 
nature  which  He  has  given  us,  and  the  world 
in  which  He  has  placed  us.  Used  in  such  a 
way.  Culture  is  transmuted  into  something 
far  higher,  more  beneficent,  than  it  ever 
could  become  if  it  set  up  for  itself  and  claimed 
the  chief  place. 

I  might  now  conclude,  but  there  is  a  poem 
of  Archbishop  Trench's,  one  of  his  earliest, 
and  most  interesting,  which  so  well  embodies 
mucli  that  I  have  said,  that  I  hope  you  will 
bear  with  me  while  I  read  a  somewhat 
lengthy   passage    from    it.     The    lines    are 


OF   CULTURE.  101 

Bimple,  not  greatly  elaborated,  but  they  are 
true,  and  they  may  perhaps  fix  the  attention 
of  some  who  by  this  time  have  grown  weary 
of  abstract  and  prosaic  argument,  —  accord- 
ing to  that  saying,  — 

"A  verse  may  find  him  who  a  sermon  flies." 

A  youth,  a  favored  child  of  Culture,  when 
he  has  long  sought  and  not  found  what  he 
expected  to  find  in  Culture,  wanders  forth 
desolate  and  desponding  into  the  eastern  des- 
ert. The  irrevocable  past  lies  heavy  on  him, 
—  his  bafiled  purpose,  his  wasted  years,  his 
utter  misery.  So  heart-forlorn  is  he  that 
he  is  on  the  verge  of  self-destruction.  At 
length,  as  he  sits  inconsolable  beside  a  ruined 
temple  in  the  desert,  an  old  man  stands  by 
his  side,  and  asks,  "  What  is  your  sorrow  ?  '* 
The  youth,  lured  by  some  strange  sympathy 
in  the  old  man's  mien  and  voice,  unburdens 
to  him  his  grief,  tells  how  he  has  tried  to 
make  and  keep  himself  wise  and  pure  and 
elevated  above  the  common  crowd,  that  in 
his  soul's  mirror  he  might  find 

"A  reflex  of  the  eternal  mind, 
A  glass  to  give  him  back  the  truth," 

how  he  has  followed  after  ideal  beauty,  to 
live  in  its  light,  dwell  beneath  its  shadow, 
but  at  length  has  found  that  this  too  \% 
vanity  and  emptiness. 


102  THE  LITERARY    THEORY 

"Till  now,  my  youth  yet  scarcely  done, 
The  heart  which  I  had  thought  to  steep 
In  hues  of  beauty,  and  to  keep 
Its  consecrated  home  and  fane, 
That  heart  is  soiled  with  many  a  stain, 
Which  from  without  or  from  withia 
Has  gathered  there  till  all  is  sin, 
Till  now  I  only  draw  my  breath, 
I  live  but  in  the  hope  of  death." 

After  an  interval  the  old  man  replies, 

"  Ah  me,  my  son, 
A  weary  course  your  life  has  run ; 
And  yet  it  need  not  be  in  vain 
That  you  have  suffered  all  this  pain;  .  . 
Nay,  deem  not  of  us  as  at  strife, 
Because  you  set  before  your  life 
A  purpose,  and  a  loftier  aim 
Than  the  blind  lives  of  men  may  claim 
For  the  most  part;  or  that  you  sought, 
By  fixed  resolve  and  solemn  thought. 
To  lift  your  being's  calm  estate 
Out  of  the  range  of  time  and  fate. 
Glad  am  I  that  a  thing  unseen, 
A  spiritual  Presence,  this  has  been 
Your  worship,  this  your  young  heart  stirred. 
But  3'et  herein  you  proudly  erred, 
Here  may  the  source  of  woe  be  found. 
You  thought  to  fling  yourself  around 
The  atmosphere  of  light  and  love 
In  which  it  was  your  joy  to  move; 
You  thought  by  efforts  of  your  own 
To  take  at  last  each  jarring  tone 
Out  of  your  life,  till  all  should  meet 
In  one  majestic  music  sweet; 
And  deemed  that  in  j'our  own  heart's  ground 
The  root  of  good  was  to  be  found, 
And  that  by  careful  watering 
And  earnest  tendance  we  might  bring 


OF  CULTURE. 

The  bud,  the  blossom,  and  the  fruit, 
To  grow  and  flourish  from  that  root. 
You  deemed  you  needed  nothing  more 
Than  skill  and  courage  to  explore 
Deep  down  enough  in  your  own  heart, 
To  where  the  well-head  lay  apart, 
Which  must  the  springs  of  being  feed. 
And  that  these  fountains  did  but  need 
The  soil  that  choked  them  moved  away. 
To  bubble  in  the  open  day. 
But  thanks  to  Heaven  it  is  not  so: 
That  root  a  richer  soil  doth  know 
Than  our  poor  hearts  could  e'er  supply:  — 
That  stream  is  from  a  source  more  high; 
From  God  it  came,  to  God  returns. 
Not  nourished  from  our  scanty  urns, 
But  fed  from  His  unfailing  river. 
Which  runs  and  will  run  on  forevwr.*' 


103 


LECTURE  IV. 

HINDRANCES   TO   SPIRITUAL   GROWTH. 

It  has  often  happened  that  when  the  sons 
of  a  family,  after  having  been  for  some  ses 
sions  at  College,  have  returned  to  their  own 
homes,  bursars,  or  scholars,  or  M.  A.'s  with 
honors,  the  family  have  felt  that  somehow 
they  were  changed,  had  lost  their  old  simple 
natures,  and  for  this  loss  college  learning  and 
distinctions  seemed  but  a  poor  substitute. 
This,  however,  may  be  only  a  temporary  re- 
sult of  severe  mental  tension  and  seclusion. 
When  the  bow  has  been  for  a  time  unstrung, 
the  unnaturalness  passes,  and  the  native, 
simple  self  reappears. 

But  I  have  known  other  stories  than  these. 
I  have  heard  of  devout  and  self-denying  par- 
ents, working  late  and  early,  and  stinting 
themselves  to  send  their  sons  to  College,  and 
in  sending  them  their  fond  hope  was  that 
these  young  men  would  return  stored  with 
knowledge  and  wisdom,  and  be  able  to  help 


HINDRANCES   TO  SPIRITUAL   GROWTH.     105 

their  parents  in  those  religious  subjects  on 
which  their  hearts  were  most  set.  Such 
hopes,  we  may  trust,  have  many  times  been 
realized.  But  one  has  heard  of  cases  which 
had  another  issue.  A  young  man  has  come 
home,  after  a  college  course,  acute,  loo;ical, 
speculative,  full  of  the  newest  views,  prating 
of  high  matters,  scientific  and  philosophical, 
a  very  prodigy  of  enlightenment.  But  that 
on  which  early  piety  had  fed  was  forsaken, 
the  old  reverence  was  gone,  and  the  parents 
saw,  with  helpless  sorrow,  that  their  son  had 
chosen  for  himself  a  far  other  road  than  that 
on  which  they  were  travelling,  and  in  which 
they  had  hoped  he  would  travel  with  them. 

It  is  a  common  tale,  one  which  has  often 
been  repeated,  but  none  the  less  pathetic  for 
that.  It  brings  before  us  the  collision  that 
often  occurs  when  newly  awakened  intellect 
first  meets  with  early  faith.  No  one  who 
has  observed  men  ever  so  little  but  must 
know  something,  either  through  his  own  ex- 
perience or  from  watching  others,  of  these 
travail-pangs  that  often  accompany  the  birth 
of  thouo-ht. 

The  special  trial  of  each  spirit  lies  in  that 
very  field  in  which  his  strength  and  activity 
are  put  forth.     The  temptation  of  the  busy 


106  HINDRANCES   TO 

trader  does  not  consist  in  mental  question- 
ings, but  in  the  tendency  to  inordinate  love 
of  gain.  The  assthetic  spirit  finds  its  trial, 
not  in  coarse  pleasures,  but  in  the  temptation 
to  follow  beauty  exclusively,  and  to  turn 
effeminately  from  duty  and  self-denial.  And 
in  like  manner  the  student  or  man  of  letters 
will  most  likely  find  his  trial  in  dealino 
rightly  with  the  intellectual  side  of  things^ 
giving  to  it  its  due  place,  and  not  more. 
Wliat  are  some  of  the  difficulties  and  temp- 
tations which  the  student  is  apt  to  meet  with, 
and  which  may  be  the  best  way  to  deal  with 
them,  — this  is  the  subject  which  will  engage 
us  to-day.  Before  entering  on  it,  however, 
let  me  say  distinctly  that  I  do  not  believe 
that  painful  questionings  and  violent  mental 
convulsions  are  an  ordeal  which  all  thought- 
ful persons  must  needs  pass  tlirough.  So  far 
from  this,  some  of  the  finest  spirits,  those 
whose  vision  is  most  intuitive  and  penetrat- 
ing, are  the  most  exempt  from  such  anxious 
soul-travail.  Indeed,  I  believe  that  there  is 
no  such  safe2;uard  ao;ainst  the  worst  conse- 
quences  of  such  perplexities  as  a  heart  that  is 
pure,  humble,  and  "  at  leisure  from  itself." 
In  the  words  of  a  modern  divine,  one  well 
known  at  the  present  time,  both  as  an  up- 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH.  107 

holder  of  freedom  of  inquiry,  and  also  as  a 
religious  and  devoted  man,  — 

"  There  are  some  who  are  never  troubled 
with  doubts  at  all.  They  live  so  heavenly  a 
life  that  doubts  and  perplexities  fall  off  tlieir 
minds  Avithout  fastening.  They  find  enough 
in  their  faith  to  feed  their  spiritual  life.  They 
do  not  need  to  inquire  into  the  foundations 
of  their  belief,  they  are  inspired  by  a  powder 
within  their  hearts.  The  heavenly  side  of 
all  truths  is  so  clear  to  them  that  any  doubts 
about  the  human  form  of  it  are  either  unin- 
telligible or  else  at  once  rejected.  They 
grow  in  knowledge  by  quiet,  steady  increase 
of  light,  without  any  intervals  of  darkness 
and  difficulty.  This  is  the  most  blessed  state, 
—  that  of  those  who  can  believe  without  the 
evidence  either  of  sense  or  of  labored  argu- 
ment. There  are  such  minds.  There  are 
those  to  whom  the  inward  proof  is  every- 
thing]:. Thev  believe  not  on  the  evidence  of 
their  senses,  or  of  their  mere  reason,  but  on 
that  of  their  consciences  and  hearts.  Their 
spirits  within  them  are  so  attuned  to  the 
truth  that  the  moment  it  is  presented  to  them 
they  accept  it  at  once.  And  this  is  certainly 
the  higher  state,  the  more  blessed,  the  more 
heavenly." 


108  HINDRANCES    TO 

These  are  they  who  have  always  rejoiced 
in  a  serene,  unclouded  vision  till  they  are 
taken  home.     And  we  have  known  such. 

Let  none,  therefore,  pique  themselves  on 
having  doubts  and  questionings  on  religious 
subjects,  as  if  it  were  a  fine  thing  to  have 
them,  proving  them  to   be  intellectual  ath- 
letes,   and  entitling  them  to  look    down  on 
those  who  are  free  from  them  as  inferior  per- 
sons,  less  mentally  gifted.     For  there  is   a 
higher  state  than  their  own  —  there  is  a  purer 
atmosphere,  which  has  been  breathed  by  per- 
sons of  as  strong  intellect  as  themselves,  but 
of  a  finer  spirit.     But  such  is  not  the  state 
of  all  thoughtful  men.     There  are  many  who 
when   they    reach   the   reasoning   age   find 
themselves  in  the  midst  of  many  difficulties, 
hedged  in  with  *'  perplexities  which  they  can- 
not explain  to  themselves,  much  less  to  oth- 
ers, and  no  one  to  help  them."     They  are 
afraid  to  tell  their  sad  heart-secrets  to  others, 
and  especially  to  their  elders,  lest  they  find 
no  sympathy.     And  so  they  are  tempted  to 
shut  them  up  within  their  own  breasts,  and 
brood  over  them  till   they  get  morbid  and 
magnify  their  difficulties  out  of  all  proportion 
to  their  reality.     In  the  case  of  such  persons 
it    becomes   a   serious    question    how   they 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH,  109 

should  be  advised  to  treat  the  difficulties  that 
occur  to  them.  On  the  one  hand,  while 
they  are  not  to  make  little  questions  of  great 
consequence,  neither  must  they  make  grave 
questions  and  perplexities  of  httle  conse- 
quence. They  are  to  be  told  that  vv^hile  all 
doubts  are  painful,  all  are  not  necessarily 
wrong.  For  some  are  natural,  born  of  hon- 
esty, and,  when  rightly  dealt  with,  have  often 
ere  now  become  the  birth-pangs  of  larger 
knowledge,  —  the  straits  through  which  men 
passed  to  clearer  light.  There  are,  on  the 
other  hand,  doubts  which  are  sinful,  born  of 
levity,  irreverence,  and  self-conceit,  or  of  a 
hard  and  perverted  conscience.  To  deter- 
mine to  which  class  any  particular  mental 
perplexities  belong  is  not  easy  for  a  man  even 
in  his  own  case  ;  much  more  is  it  difficult,  nay 
impossible,  for  us  to  read  the  mental  state  of 
another,  and  pronounce  judgment  on  it.  The 
fact  that  some  doubts  are  not  sinless,  that  they 
may  arise  out  of  the  state  of  a  man's  spirit, 
suggests  to  every  one  cautiousness  and  self- 
scrutiny.  This  is  a  work  which  no  man  can 
do  for  his  brother.  Each  man  must  take  his 
own  difficulties  into  the  light  of  conscience 
and  of  God,  and  there  deal  with  them  hon- 
estly yet  humbly,  seeking  to  be  guided  aright. 


110  HINDRANCES    TO 

For  the  spirit  of  a  man  is  a  very  delicate  in- 
strument, which,  if  it  be  distorted  out  of  its 
natural  course,  this  way  or  that,  by  prejudice 
or  interest  or  double-dealing  on  the  one  hand, 
or  fool -hardiness  and  self-confidence  on  the 
other,  may  never  perhaps  in  this  life  recover 
its  equilibrium. 

I  should  be  loath  to  seem  to  trespass 
either  on  the  speculative  field  of  the  theolog- 
ical professor,  or  on  the  practical  one  of  the 
Christian  minister.  But,  without  doing 
either,  there  is  room  enough  for  offering 
such  suggestions  as  have  been  gathered  from 
a  number  of  years  not  unobservant  of  what 
has  been  goino;  on  in  that  border  land  where 
faith  and  knowledge  meet.  To  young  and 
ardent  spirits  the  wrestling  with  hard  ques- 
tions on  the  very  verge  of  human  knowledge 
has  a  wonderful  fascination.  They  throw 
themselves  fearlessly  into  the  abyss,  and 
think  that  they  shall  be  able  to  dive  down  to 
depths  hitherto  unsounded.  Problems  that 
have  baffled  the  world's  best  thinkers  will, 
they  fancy,  yield  up  to  them  their  secret. 
Yet  these  thino;s  "  do  take  a  sober  colorinoj " 
from  eyes  which  have  seen  too  many  young 
men,  some  of  them  the  finest  spirits  of  our 
tinie.  setting  forth  in  over-confidence  in  their 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH.  H] 

own  powers,  imagining  that  they  were  suf- 
ficient to  meet  all  difficulties,  and  coming 
before  long  to  mournful  shi]) wreck.  When 
experience  has  impressed  us  with  the  full  im- 
portance of  the  mental  tendencies  for  good 
and  for  evil  which  often  begin  at  College, 
who  would  not  be  earnestly  disposed  to  turn 
his  experience,  if  he  miglit,  to  the  help  of 
those  younger  than  himself,  at  that  interest- 
ing time  of  life  when  they  most  need  help, 
and  often  least  find  it?  But  then  there 
comes  upon  the  mind  the  conviction  that  this 
is  an  issue  w^herein,  in  the  last  resort,  no  one 
can  bear  his  brother's  burden.  All  that  we 
can  do  is  to  suo;o;est  certain  danojers  to  which 
the  student  is  from  the  nature  of  his  occupa- 
tions peculiarly  exposed,  and  to  leave  it  to 
each  for  himself  to  apply  what  is  said  consci- 
entiously, according  as  he  feels  that  it  bears 
on  his  need. 

I.  The  first  hindrance  I  will  notice  is  one 
which  arises  out  of  the  very  nature  of  men- 
tal cultivation.  If  there  is  one  thing  which 
more  than  another  distinguishes  a  well-trained 
mind,  it  is  the  poAver  of  thinking  clearly,  of 
dividing  with  a  sharp  line  between  its  knowl- 
adfje  and  its  iojnorance.     One  of  the  best  re 


112  HINDRANCES    TO 

suits  of  a  logical  and  also  of  a  scientific  disci- 
pline is    that   It   leads   us  to  form    definite, 
clearly  cut    conceptions    of  things.     Indeed, 
this  power  of   limiting,  defining,  making   a 
o/?09  or  bound  round  each  object  you  think  of, 
and  thus  making  them  thinkable,  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  thought.     For  what   is   all 
thought  but  a  rescuing,  a  cutting  off  by  the 
mind's  inherent  power  of  bounding,  objects 
from  out   the  vague  and   undefined?     But 
this  quality  of  all  thought,  which  in  trained 
thought  is  raised  to  a  higher  power,  while  it 
constitutes  mental  strength,  contains  also  its 
own  weakness,  or  rather  limitation.     Clearly 
defined  knowledge  is  mainly  of  things  we  see. 
All  find  it  much  easier  to  form  definite  con- 
ceptions of  objects  of  the  outer  sense  than  of 
objects   of  the   inner   sense, — to    conceive 
clearly  things  we  see,  hear,  and  touch,  than 
those  thoughts  which  have  not  any  outward 
object  corresponding  to  them.     If  thouglits 
are  difficult  adequately  to  grasp,  much  more 
are  emotions,  — with  their  infinite  complexitv, 
their   evanescent    shades.       But   each   man 
gains  a  power  of  realizing  and  firmly  conceiv- 
ing those  things  he  habitually  deals  with,  and 
not  other  things.     The  man  whose  training 
has  lain  exclusively  in  physics,  accurately  con- 


SPIRITUAL    GROWTH.  113 

ceives  physical  forces,  however  subtle,  and 
can  lav  down  tlieir  relations  to  each  other  ; 
but  then  he  will  probably  be  comparatively 
weak  in  apprehending  subtleties  of  thought  and 
mental  relations.  Again,  the  mere  logician, 
while  strong  to  grasp  logical  distinctions,  will 
generally  be  found  comparatively  at  sea  when 
lie  has  to  catch  the  imaginative  aspects  of 
things,  and  fix  evanescent  hues  of  feeling. 
This  takes  something  of  the  poetic  faculty. 
Each  man  is  strong  in  that  he  is  trained  in, 
weak  in  other  regions,  —  so  much  so  that 
often  the  objects  there  seem  to  him  non- 
existent. 

Now  the  scientific  mind  and  the  logical 
mind,  when  turned  towards  the  supersensi- 
ble world,  are  apt  to  find  the  same  difficulty, 
only  in  a  much  greater  degree,  as  tliey  find 
in  dealing  with  objects  of  imagination,  or 
with  pure  emotions.  Whoever  has  tried  to 
think  steadily  at  all  on  religious  subjects 
must  be  aware  of  this  difficulty.  When  we 
look  upward,  and  try  to  think  of  God  and  of 
the  soul's  relation  to  Him,  we  are  apt  to  feel 
as  if  we  had  stepped  out  into  a  world  in  which 
the  understanding  finds  little  or  no  firm  foot- 
ing. We  cannot  present  to  ourselves  these 
truths   adequately,  and  as  they   really  are. 


114  HINDRANCES    TO 

Therefore  we  are  under  the  necessity  of 
*'  substituting  anthropomorphic  conceptions, 
determined  by  accidents  of  place  and  time, 
—  to  speak  of  God  as  dwelHng  above,  to  at- 
tribute a  before  and  an  after  to  the  Divine 
thouo-ht."  With  these  feeble  adumbrations, 
which  are  the  nearest  approaches  to  the  re- 
ality we  can  make,  the  devout  mind  is  con- 
tent, feelincr  them  to  be  full  of  meaning.  But 
the  scientific  and  the  logical  mind  often  feels 
crreat  difficulty  in  being  content  with  these. 
It  craves  more  exactness  of  outline,  and  is 
tempted  to  reject  as  non-existent  things  which 
it  cannot  subject  to  the  laws  of  thought  to 
which  it  is  accustomed,  —  in  fact,  to  limit 
the  orb  of  belief  to  the  orb  of  exact  knowl- 
edge. Mere  adumbrations  of  spiritual  reali- 
ties are  an  offense  to  the  mind  that  will  ac- 
cept only  scientific  exactness.  The  falsity  of 
this  way  of  reasoning  has  been  well  ex])osed 
by  Coleridge,  where  he  protests  against 
"the  application  of  deductive  and  conclusive 
logic  to  subjects  concerning  which  the  prem- 
ises are  expressed  in  not  merely  inadequate 
but  accommodated  terms.  But  to  conclude 
terms  proper  and  adequate  from  quasific  and 
mendicant  premises  is  illogical  logic  with  a 
veno-eance.  Water  cannot  rise  hicrher  than 
its  source,  neither  can  human  reasoning.'* 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH.  115 

The  fact  is,  those  root-truths,  on  wlilch 
the  foundations  of  our  being  rest,  are  appre- 
hended not  logically  at  all,  but  mystically. 
This  faculty  of  spiritual  apprehension,  which 
is  a  very  different  one  from  those  which  are 
trained  in  schools  and  colleges,  must  be  edu- 
cated and  fed,  not  less  but  more  carefully 
than  our  lower  faculties,  else  it  will  be 
starved  and  die,  however  learned  or  able  in 
other  respects  we  may  become.  And  the 
means  which  train  it  are  reverent  thouo-ht, 
meditation,  prayer,  and  all  those  other  means 
by  which  the  divine  life  is  fed. 

But  because  the  primary  truths  of  religion 
refuse  to  be  caught  in  the  grip  of  the  logical 
vice,  —  because  they  are,  as  I  said,  transcend- 
ent, and  only  mystically  apprehended,  —  are 
thinking  men  therefore  either  to  give  up 
these  objects  as  impossible  to  think  about,  or 
to  content  themselves  with  a  vao;ue  reliffi- 
osity,  an  unreal  sentimental  ism  ?  Not  so. 
There  are  certain  veritable  facts  of  conscious- 
ness to  which  religion  makes  its  appeal. 
These  the  thinking  man  must  endeavor  to 
apprehend  with  as  much  definiteness  as  their 
nature  admits  of, — must  verify  them  by  liis 
own  inward  experience,  and  by  the  recorded 
experience  of  the  most  religious  men.      And 


116  HINDRANCES   TO 

there  are  other  facts  outside  of  our  conscious- 
ness and  above  it,  which  are  revealed  that 
they  may  fit  into  and  be  taken  up  by  those 
needs  of  which  we  are  conscious.  Rightly 
to  apprehend  them,  so  that  we  shall  make 
them  our  own  inwardly,  so  that  they  shall 
supplement,  deepen,  and  expand  our  moral 
perceptions,  not  contradict  and  traverse 
them,  this  is  no  easy  work.  It  is  the  work 
of  the  reflective  side  of  the  religious  life. 
But  Avhen  all  is  done,  it  will  still  remain, 
that  in  the  whole  process  intellect  or  the 
mere  understanding  is  but  a  subordinate 
agent,  and  must  be  kept  so.  The  primary 
agent,  on  our  side,  is  that  power  of  spiritual 
apprehension  which  we  know  under  many 
names,  none  perhaps  better  than  those  old 
ones,  "  the  hearing  ear,  the  understanding 
heart."  The  main  condition  is  that  the 
spiritual  ear  should  be  open  to  overhear  and 
patiently  take  in,  and  the  will  ready  to  obey, 
that  testimony  which,  I  believe,  God  bears 
in  every  human  heart,  however  dull,  to  those 
great  truths  which  the  Bible  reveals.  This, 
and  not  lomc,  is  the  wav  to  grow  in  religious 
knowledge,  to  know  that  the  truths  of  re- 
ligion are  not  shadows,  but  deep  realities. 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH.  H^ 

II.  Akin  to  the  desire  for  exact  concep- 
tions is  the  desire  for  system.  The  longing 
to  systematize,  to  form  a  completely  rounded 
theoiy  of  the  universe,  which  shall  embrace 
all  known  facts,  and  assign  to  each  its  proper 
place,  this  craving  lies  deep  in  the  intellec- 
tual man.  It  is  at  the  root  of  science  and  of 
philosophy  in  its  widest  sense  :  out  of  it  has 
arisen  the  whole  fabric  of  exact  and  scientific 
knowledge.  But  this,  like  other  good  ten- 
dencies, may  be  overdone,  and  become  rash 
and  one-sided.  From  this  impulse,  too  has- 
tily carried  out,  arise  such  theories  of  life  as 
that  of  Professor  Huxley,  which  was  discussed 
in  a  former  lecture.  It  is  this  that  gives  to 
Positivism  the  charm  it  has  for  many  ener- 
getic minds.  It  seems  such  gain  to  reach  a 
comprehensive,  all-embracing  point  of  view, 
from  which  all  knowledge  shall  be  seen 
mapped  out,  every  object  and  science  falling 
into  its  proper  place,  and  all  uncertainty,  all 
cloudy  horizons,  rigorously  shut  out.  To 
many  minds,  nothing  seems  too  great  a  price 
to  pay  for  this.  And  to  secure  it,  they  have 
to  pay  a  great  price.  They  have  to  cut  off 
unspairingly  all  the  ragged  rims  of  knowl- 
idge,  to  exclude  from  view  the  whole  border 
land  between   the  definitely  conceived    and 


118  [IINDRANCES    TO 

the  dimly  apprehended,  —  the  very  region 
in  which  the  main  difficulties  of  thought  pe- 
cuHarly  he.  They  have  to  shut  their  eyes 
to  all  those  phenomena,  often  the  most  in- 
teresting, which  they  cannot  locate.  But 
though  such  systematizers  exclude  them 
from  their  system,  they  cannot  exclude  them 
from  reality.  There  they  remain  rooted  all 
the  same,  whether  we  recognize  them  or  not. 
Shut  them  out  as  you  may,  they  will,  in 
spite  of  all  theories,  reappear,  cropping  out  in 
human  history  and  in  human  consciousness. 
Now  it  so  happens  that  of  these  facts  which 
refuse  to  be  systematized,  a  large  part,  but 
by  no  means  all,  arise  out  of  man's  religious 
nature.  The  existence  of  evil,  manifesting 
itself  in  man's  consciousness  as  the  sense  of 
sin,  or  estrangement  from  God,  recovery 
from  this,  not  by  any  power  evolved  from 
man's  own  resources,  but  by  a  power  which 
descended  from  above,  when  "  heaven 
opened  itself  anew  to  man's  long-alienated 
race,"  —  these,  and  all  the  facts  they  imply, 
are,  and  always  have  been,  a  stumbling- 
block  to  those  who  are  bent  on  a  rounded 
system.  Hence  every  age,  and  this  age  pre- 
eminently, has  seen  attempts  to  resolve 
Christianity  into  a  natural  product.     Because 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH.  119 

it  enters  into  all  things  human,  and  moulds 
them  to  itself,  the  attempt  is  made  to  account 
for  it  by  the  joint  action  of  those  spiritual 
elements  which  preexisted  in  human  nature. 
Such  attempts  Christianity  has  for  eighteen 
centuries  withstood,  and  will  withstand  till 
the  end.  The  idea  of  a  power  coming  down 
from  a  higher  sphere  to  work  in  and  renew 
the  natural  forces  of  humanity,  must  always 
be  repugnant  to  any  mode  of  thought  which 
makes  a  complete  system  the  first  necessity. 
No  doubt  the  craving  for  a  system  is  a  deep 
instinct  of  the  purely  intellectual  man,  but  it 
is  a  very  different  thing  from  the  craving  for 
lightness  with  God,  Avhich  is  the  prime  in- 
stinct of  the  spiritual  man.  When  once 
awakened,  the  spiritual  faculty  far  outgoes 
all  systems,  scientific,  philosophic,  or  theo- 
logical, and  apprehends  and  lives  by  truths 
which  these  cannot  reduce  to  system. 

III.  Again,  there  is  another  way  in  which 
thouo;ht  seems  often  to  o;et  cau<]jht  in  its  own 
meshes,  and  so  fall  short  of  the  highest  truth. 
There  is  a  tendency,  not  peculiar  to  the 
present  day,  though  very  prevalent  now,  to 
rest  in  Law,  whether  in  the  natural  or  moral 
world,  and  to  shrink  from  going  beyond  it 


120  niNDRANCES    TO 

up  to  God.  There  are  those  who  think  that 
when  science  has  ascended  to  the  most  gen- 
eral uniformities  of  sequence  and  coexistence, 
then  knowledge  has  reached  its  limit,  and  all 
beyond  is  mere  conjecture.  To  this  I  will 
not  reply,  in  the  old  phrase,  about  a  law  and 
a  law-giver,  for  this  to  some  seems  a  play  on 
words.  But  one  thing,  often  said  before, 
must  be  repeated.  This  supposed  necessity 
to  rest  in  the  perception  of  ordered  phenom- 
ena, is  no  necessity  at  all,  but  an  artificial 
and  arbitrarily  imposed  limitation,  against 
which  thought  left  to  its  natural  action  rebels. 
It  is  impossible  for  any  reflective  mind,  not 
dominated  by  a  system,  to  regard  the  ordered 
array  of  physical  forces,  and  to  rest  satisfied 
with  this  order,  without  going  on  to  ask 
whence  it  came,  what  placed  it  there. 
Thought  cannot  be  kept  back,  when  it  sees 
arrangement,  from  asking  what  is  the  arrang- 
ing power ;  when  it  sees  existence,  from  in- 
quiry how  it  came  to  exist.  And  the  ques- 
tion is  a  natural  and  legitimate  one,  in  spite 
of  all  that  phenomenalism  may  say  against  It, 
and  it  will  not  cease  to  be  asked  while  there 
are  reasoning  men  to  ask  it. 

The  same  habit  of  mind  is  fain,  in  moral 
subjects,  to  rest  in  moral  law.     But,  if  we 


SPIRITUAL    GROWTH.  121 

look  closely  at  reality,  what  are  moral  law, 
moral  order,  but  abstractions  generalized 
from  facts  felt  and  observed  by  all  men? 
They  are  not  self-subsisting  entities,  such  as 
our  own  personality  is.  And  a  living  will 
would  be  justified  in  refusing  allegiance  to  a 
mere  abstraction,  however  high  or  seemingly 
imperative,  if  there  was  nothing  behind  it. 
It  is  because  moral  law  is  but  a  condensed 
expression  for  the  energy  of,  shall  I  say,  a 
Higher  Personality,  or  something  greater, 
more  living,  more  all-encompassing,  than 
personality,  that  it  comes  home  to  us  with 
the  power  it  does. 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  more  obvious 
ways  in  which  our  intellectual  habits  may, 
and  often  do,  become  a  hindrance  instead  of 
a  help  towards  spiritual  progress.  There 
are  many  other  ways,  more  subtle  and  hard 
to  deal  with,  some  of  which  I  had  intended 
to  notice.  But  for  to-day  you  have  probably 
had  enough  of  abstractions.  And  what  re- 
mains of  our  time  must  be  given  to  more 
practical  considerations. 

Religious  men  are  always  trying  to  set 
forth  in  defense  of  their  faith  demonstrations 
which  shall  be  irrefragable.  This  is  natural, 
nor  do  I   say  that  it  is   altogether   unwise. 


122  HINDRANCES   TO 

For  as  facts  and  doctrines  form  the  .intellec- 
tual outworks  of  faith,  historical  criticism 
must  make  good  the  one,  sound  philosophy 
must  so  far  warrant  the  other.  But  when 
all  that  argument  can  do  has  been  done,  it 
still  remains  true  that  the  best  and  most  con- 
vincincr  grounds  of  faith  will  still  remain 
behind  unshaped  into  argument.  There  is  a 
great  reserve  fund  of  conviction  arising  from 
the  increased  experience  which  Christian 
men  have  of  the  truth  of  what  they  believe. 
And  this  cannot  be  beat  out  into  syllogisms. 
It  is  something  too  inward,  too  personal,  too 
mystical,  to  be  set  forth  so.^  It  is  not  on 
that  account  the  less  real  and  powerful.  In- 
deed, it  may  be  said  that  once  felt  it  is  the 
most  self-evidencing  of  all  proofs.  This  is 
what  Coleridge  said,  "  If  you  wish  to  be  as- 
sured of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  try  it." 
*'  Believe,  and  if  thy  belief  be  right,  that 
insight  which  gradually  transmutes  faith  into 
knowledge  will  be  the  reward  of  thy  belief." 
To  be  vitally  convinced  of  the  truth  of  "  the 
process  of  renewal  described  by  Scripture,  a 
man  must  put  himself  within  that  process." 
His  own  experience  of  its  truth,  and  the  con- 
sent assurances  of  others,  whom,  if  candid, 

1  Note  VI. 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH,  123 

he  will  feel  to  be  better  than  himself,  will  be 
the  most  sufficing  evidence.  But  this  is  an 
evidence  which,  while  it  satisfies  a  man's 
self,  cannot  be  brought  to  bear  on  those  who 
stand  without  the  pale,  and  deny  those  things 
of  which  they  have  not  themselves  experi- 
ence. 

Many  are  apt  to  imagine  that  a  hard  head 
and  a  blameless  deportment  make  a  man 
free  of  the  inner  shrine  of  Christian  truth. 
When  a  scholar  goes  forth  from  college  well 
equipped  with  the  newest  methods,  he  some- 
times fancies  that  he  holds  the  key  to  which 
all  the  secrets  of  faith  must  open.  And  if 
they  do  not  at  once  yield  to  his  mental  efforts, 
he  is  tempted  to  regard  them  as  untrue. 
But  clear  and  trained  intellect  is  one  tiling, 
spiritual  discernment  quite  another.  The 
former  does  not  exclude,  but  neither  does  it 
necessarily  include  the  latter.  They  are  en- 
ergies of  two  different  sides  of  our  being. 
Unless  the  spiritual  nature  in  a  man  is  aUve 
and  active,  it  is  in  vain  that  he  works  at  relig- 
ious truth  merely  from  the  intellectual  side. 
If  he  is  not  awake  in  a  deeper  region  than 
his  intellectual,  though  he  may  be  an  able 
critic  or  dialectician,  a  vital  theologian  or  a 
religious  man  he  cannot  be.     Not  long  ago  I 


124  HINDRANCES   TO 

read  this  remark  of  the  German  theoloorian 
Rothe,  —  "It  is  only  the  pious  subject  that 
can  speculate  theologically.  And  why? 
Because  it  is  he  alone  who  has  the  original 
datum,  in  virtue  of  communion  with  God  on 
which  the  dialectic  lays  hold.  So  soon  as 
the  original  datum  is  there,  everything  else 
becomes  simply  a  matter  of  logic."  Or  as  a 
thoughtful  English  scholar  and  divine  lately 
expressed  it :  —  "  Of  all  qualities  which  a 
theologian  must  possess,  a  devotional  spirit  is 
the  chief.  For  the  soul  is  larger  than  the 
mind,  and  the  religious  emotions  lay  hold  on 
the  truths  to  which  they  are  related  on  many 
sides  at  once.  A  powerful  understanding, 
on  the  other  hand,  seizes  on  single  points, 
and  however  enlarged  in  its  own  sphere,  is 
of  itself  never  safe  from  narrowness  of  view. 
For  its  very  office  is  to  analyze,  which  im- 
plies that  thought  is  fixed  down  to  particular 
relations  of  the  subject.  No  mental  concep- 
tion, still  more  no  expression  in  words,  can 
give  the  full  significance  of  any  fact,  least  of 
all  of  a  divine  fact.  Hence  it  is  that  mere 
reasoning  is  found  such  an  ineffectual  measure 
against  simple  piety,  and  devotion  is  such  a 
safeguard  against  intellectual  errors."  Yes, 
"  the  original  datum,"  that  is  the  main  thing. 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH. 


125 


And  what  is  this  but  that  which  our  old  Pu- 
ritan forefathers  meant  when  they  spoke  of  a 
man  *'  having  the  root  of  the  matter  in  him  ?  " 
The  devout  spirit  is  not  fed  by  purely  intel- 
lectual processes,  —  sometimes  it  is  even  frus- 
trated by  them.  The  hard  brain-work  and 
the  seclusion  of  the  student  tend,  if  uncoun- 
teracted,  to  dry  up  the  springs  alike  of  the 
human  sympathies  and  of  the  heavenward 
emotions.  It  was  a  saying  of  Dr.  Arnold, 
certainly  no  disparager  of  intellect,  that  no 
student  could  continue  long  in  a  healthy  relig- 
ious state  unless  his  heart  was  kept  tender  by 
mingling  with  children,  or  by  frequent  inter- 
course with  the  poor  and  the  suffering. 

And  this  suggests  a  subject  which  might 
occupy  a  whole  lecture  or  course  of  lectures, 
to  which,  however,  now  only  a  few  words  can 
be  given.  It  is  one  main  object  of  all  our 
education  here  to  train  the  critical  faculty. 
This  faculty,  educated  by  scholarship,  has  an 
important  function  to  fill  in  matters  bearing 
on  rehgion.  With  regard  to  these  it  has  a 
work  to  do  which  ought  not  to  be  disregarded, 
and  that  work  it  is  at  present  doing  actively 
enough.  To  weigh  evidence,  and  form  a  sound 
judgment  whether  alleged  facts  are  really 
true,  whether  documents  really  belong  to  the 


126  HINDRANCES   TO 

age  and  the  authors  they  profess  to  be  of,  -^ 
by  trained  historical  imagination  to  enter  into 
the  whole  circumstances  and  meaning  of  any 
past  age,  —  to  examine  the  meaning  of  the  Sa- 
cred Scriptures,  and  see  ''  how  far  its  modes 
and  figures  of  representation  are  merely  vehi- 
cles of  inner  truth,  or  are  of  the  essence  of 
the  truth  itself,  —  to  understand  the  human 
conditions  of  the  writers,  and  appreciate  how 
far  these  may  have  influenced  their  state- 
ments, —  to  give  to  past  theological  language 
its  proper  weight,  and  not  more  than  its 
proper  weight,  —  to  trace  the  history  of  its 
terms  so  as  not  to  confound  human  thought 
with  divine  faith,"  —  all  these  processes  are 
essential  to  the  theologian,  —  some  measure 
of  them  is  required  in  every  educated  man 
who  will  think  rightly  on  such  subjects.  I 
would  not  underrate  the  value  of  this  kind  of 
work.  It  is  necessary  in  the  educated,  if 
well-ixrounded  religion  is  to  live  amono;  the 
people,  and  faith  is  not  to  be  wholly  dis- 
severed from  intellectual  truth.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  carried  on  in  the  outworks  rather 
than  in  the  citadel,  it  deals  with  the  shells 
rather  than  with  the  kernel  of  divine  things. 
This  vocation  of  the  critic,  however  useful 
for  others,  has  dangers  for  himself.     There 


SPIRITUAL   GROWTH.  127 

is  a  risk  that  criticism  shall  absorb  his  whole 
being.  This  is  no  imaginary  danger.  We 
are  not  called  on  to  believe  this  or  that  doc- 
trine which  may  be  proposed  to  us  till  we  can 
do  so  from  honest  conviction.  But  we  are 
called  on  to  trust,  —  to  trust  ourselves  to 
God,  being  sure  that  He  will  lead  us  right,  — • 
to  keep  close  to  Him,  —  and  to  trust  the 
promises  which  He  Avhispers  through  our 
conscience  ;  this  we  can  do,  and  we  ought  to 
do.  Every  scholar  who  is  also  a  religious 
man  must  have  felt  it,  —  must  be  aware  how 
apt  he  is  to  approach  the  simplest  spiritual 
truths  as  a  critic,  not  as  a  simple  learner. 
And  yet  he  feels  that  when  all  is  said  and 
done,  it  is  trust,  not  criticism,  that  the  soul 
lives  by.  If  he  is  ever  to  get  beyond  the 
mere  outer  precinct  and  pass  witliin  the  holy 
place,  he  must  put  off  his  critical  apparatus, 
and  enter  as  a  simple  contrite-hearted  man. 
Not  as  men  of  science,  not  as  critics,  not  as 
philosophers,  but  as  little  children,  shall  we 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  "  There- 
fore," says  Leigliton,  speaking  of  filial  prayer, 
"  many  a  poor  unlettered  Christian  far  out- 
strips your  school  rabbis  in  this  attainment, 
because  it  is  not  effectually  taught  in  these 
lower  academies." 


128  HINDRANCES  TO 

These  are  reflections  needed  perhaps  at  all 
times   by   those   immersed   in   thought   and 
study,  —  never     more     needed    than    now. 
Numberless  voices,  through  newspaper,  pam- 
phlet, periodical,  from  platform   and  pulpit, 
are  telling  us  that  we  are  in  the  midst  of  a 
transition  age,  so  loudly  that  the  dullest  can- 
not choose  but  hear.     It  is  a  busy,  restless 
time,  eager  to  cast  off  the  old  and  reach  for- 
ward to  the  new.     It  needs  no  diviner  to  tell 
us  that  this  century  will  not  pass  without  a 
great  breaking  up  of  the  dogmatic  structures 
that  have  held  ever  since  the  Reformation  or 
the  succeeding   age.     From   many  sides    at 
once  a  simplifying  of  the  code,  a  revision  of 
the    standards,  is   being   demanded.     I  will 
not  ask  whether  this  is  good  or  bad,  desirable 
or   not.     It   is  enough  that  it  is  inevitable. 
From  such  a  removal  of  old  landmarks  two 
opposite   results   may  arise.     Either  it  may 
make  faith  easier  by  taking  cumbrous  forms 
out  of  the   way,  —  it  may  make  the  direct 
approach  to  Christ  and  God  simple  and  more 
natural,  —  may,  in  fact,  bring  God  nearer  to 
the  souls  of  men,  —  or  it  may  remove  Him 
to  a  greater  distance,  and   make   life  more 
completely  secular.     Which  shall  the  result 
be  ?     This  depends  for  each  of  us  on  the  way 


SPIRITUAL    GROWTH.  129 

»ve  use  the  new  state  of  things,  on  the  pre- 
paredness or  non-preparedness  of  heart  with 
which  we  meet  it.  Often  it  is  seen  that 
great  changes,  which  in  the  long-run  turn  to 
the  good  of  the  community,  bring  suffering 
and  grievous  loss  on  their  way  to  many  an 
individual.  And  a  time  of  transition,  when 
tlie  old  bonds  are  being  broken  up,  is  a  time 
of  trial  to  the  spirits  of  men.  At  such  a  time, 
in  anxiety  but  not  in  despair,  we  ask,  how  is 
the  old  piety  to  live  on  through  all  changes 
into  the  new  world  that  is  to  be?  If  the 
outward  framework  that  helped  to  strengthen 
our  fathers  is  being  removed,  the  more  the 
need  that  we  should  cleave  to  the  inward, 
the  vital,  the  spiritual  communion  with  Him 
on  whom  the  soul  lives.  Secular  and 
worldly  common  sense  will  discuss  in  news- 
papers, literary  criticism  in  magazines,  these 
momentous  changes ;  but  such  talk  touches 
only  the  outside  aspect  of  them,  and  cannot 
discern  what  is  essential  or  what  is  not. 
Even  refined  intellectuality  cannot  much 
help  us  here.  That  which  passes  safely 
through  all  changes  is  the  tender  conscience, 
the  trusting  heart,  the  devout  mind.  Let 
us  seek  these,  and  the  disciplines  which 
strengthen  them.     College  learnincr  is  srood. 


130  HINDRANCES   TO 

but  not  all  the  learnino;  of  all  the  Universi- 
ties  of  Europe  can  compensate  for  the  loss 
of  that  which  the  youth  reared  in  a  religious 
home  has  learned  in  childhood  at  his  mother's 
knee. 

In  all  the  best  men  you  meet,  perhaps  the 
thing  that  is  most  peculiar  about  them  is  the 
child's  heart  they  bear  within  the  man's. 
However  they  have  differed  in  other  respects, 
in  their  tempers,  gifts,  attainments,  in  this 
they  agreed.  With  those  things  they  were, 
so  to  speak,  clothed  upon,  —  this  was  their 
very  core,  their  essential  self.  And  this 
child's  heart  it  is  that  is  the  organ  of  faith, 
trust,  heavenly  communion.  It  is  a  very 
simple  thing,  so  simple  that  worldly  men  are 
apt  either  not  to  perceive  or  to  despise  it. 
And  young  persons  when  they  first  grow  up, 
and  enter  the  world,  are  tempted  to  make  lit- 
tle of  it.  They  think  that  now  they  are  men 
they  must  put  away  childish  things,  must 
learn  the  world,  and  conform  to  its  ways  and 
estimates  of  things. 

But  the  TO.  Tov  vrjTTLov,  the  childish  things, 
which  St.  Paul  put  away,  belong  to  a  quite 
different  side  of  child-nature  from  the  Tra/Stw, 
the  little  child  which  our  Lord  recommended 
for  our  example. 


SPIRITUAL  GROWTH.  131 

We  should  try,  as  we  grow  up  into  mau- 
nood,  and  get  to  know  the  world,  to  have 
this  simplicity  of  childhood  kept  fresh  within 
us,  still  at  the  centre.  If  we  allow  the  world 
to  rob  us  of  it,  as  so  many  do,  in  boyhood, 
even  before  manhood  begins,  we  may  be  sure 
that  the  world  has  nothing  equal  to  it  to  give 
us  instead.  And  they  who  may  have  for  a 
time  lost  it,  or  had  it  obscured  or  put  into 
abeyance  by  contact  with  men,  cannot  too 
soon  seek  to  have  it  restored  within  them. 
And  the  only  way  to  preserve  this  good 
thing,  or  have  it,  if  lost,  renewed,  is  to  open 
the  heart  to  simple,  truthful  communion  with 
God  and  Christ,  and  try  to  bring  the  heart 
ever  closer  and  closer  to  Him. 

That  this  is  intended  to  be  our  very  in- 
most nature,  the  way  in  which  we  are  reared 
by  Providence  seems  to  show.  For  all  the 
first  years  of  our  life  He  surrounds  us  with 
the  warm  charities  of  home,  —  by  these  He 
calls  out  all  our  earliest,  deepest,  most  per- 
manent feelings.  School,  college,  the  world 
follow,  but  their  influences,  great  as  they  are, 
never  penetrate  down,  at  least  in  natural 
characters,  so  deep  as  those  first  affections. 
And  then  in  mature  life,  the  home  of  child- 
hood is  generally,  if  possible,  reproduced  in 


132    HINDRANCES   TO  SPIRITUAL  GROWTH, 

a  home  of  our  own,  in  which  all  the  early 
affections  are  once  more  renewed,  enhanced 
bj  the  thoughtftilness  that  life  has  brought. 

Let  me  close  with  reading  what  Pascal  has 
left  as  his  Profession  of  Faith :  — 

"  I  love  poverty,  because  Jesus  Christ  loved 
it.  I  love  wealth,  because  it  gives  me  the 
means  of  assisting  the  wretched.  I  keep 
faith  with  all  men.  I  do  not  render  evil  to 
those  who  do  it  to  me  ;  but  I  desire  a  state 
for  them  like  to  my  own,  in  which  I  receive 
neither  evil  nor  good  from  the  hand  of  man. 
I  endeavor  to  be  just,  truthful,  sincere,  and 
faithful  to  all  men ;  and  I  have  a  tenderness 
of  heart  for  those  to  whom  God  has  united 
me  more  closely  ;  and  whether  I  am  alone, 
or  in  the  sight  of  men,  in  all  my  actions  I 
have  in  sight  God,  who  must  judge  them, 
and  to  whom  I  have  consecrated  them  all. 

"  These  are  my  sentiments,  and  I  bless  all 
the  days  of  my  life  my  Redeemer,  who  has 
put  them  into  me,  and  who,  from  a  man  full 
of  weakness,  miseiy,  concupiscence,  pride, 
and  ambition,  has  made  a  man  exempt  from  all 
these  evils  by  the  strength  of  His  grace,  to 
which  all  the  glory  of  it  is  due,  since  I  have 
in  myself  nothing  but  misery  and  error." 


LECTURE  V. 

RELIGION    COMBINING    CULTURE    WITH    ITSELF. 

The  truth  which  I  tried  to  bring  before 
you  in  my  last  lecture,  though  a  very  obvious 
one,  is  yet  sometimes  forgotten.  It  was  this  : 
To  discern  and  judge  rightly  of  spiritual 
truth  is  not  mainly  the  work  of  the  logical 
understandino;,  nor  of  rouo;h  and  round  com- 
mon  sense.  To  do  this  requires  that  another 
capacity  be  aAvake  in  a  man,  —  a  spiritual 
apprehension,  or,  call  it  by  what  name  you 
may,  a  deeper,  more  internal  light,  which 
shall  be  behind  the  understanding,  as  it 
were,  informing  and  illuminating  it.  For 
otherwise  the  understanding,  however  pow- 
erful or  acute,  attains  not  to  spiritual  truth. 
This  power  of  spiritual  apprehension  we  saw 
is,  though  not  identical  with  the  moral  nature, 
more  akin  to  it,  — belongs  more  to  this  side 
of  our  being  than  to  the  intellectual.  It 
contains  the  moral  nature,  and  something 
more  than  what  ordinarily  comes  under  that 
name.      Like  every  other  power  in  man,  it 


134  COMBINATION   OF 

is  capable  of  growth  and  cultivation.  We 
can,  if  we  choose,  starve  and  kill  it,  or  we 
can,  by  submitting  it  to  its  proper  discipHne 
and  bringing  it  into  contact  with  its  proper 
objects,  deepen  and  expand  it.  Care,  watch- 
fulness, earnest  cultivation  it  requires ;  but 
that  cultivation  is  of  a  different  kind,  as  its 
objects  are  different,  from  that  which  trains 
the  intellect  and  the  imagination,  and  it  can- 
not be  directly  taught  in  colleges  and  schools. 
The  belief  that  the  spiritual  faculty  is  dif- 
ferent from  the  logical  and  scientific  faculty, 
led  me  to  notice  some  of  the  hindrances 
which  our  habits  as  students  often  put  in  the 
w^ay  of  spiritual  vision  and  religious  growth. 
The  mental  tendencies  which  I  noted  were 
amono-  the  most  obvious,  those  that  meet  us 
at  the  very  threshold.  There  are  several 
others  more  recondite,  which  I  should  have 
liked  to  notice  ;  but  to  this  branch  of  the  sub- 
ject enough  of  time  has  been  given.  The 
more  welcome  task  awaits  me  to-day  of  speak- 
ing for  a  little,  not  of  the  hindrances,  but  of 
the  helps  towards  spiritual  knowledge. 

The  capacity  of  spiritual  apprehension  — 
that  is,  the  power  to  apprehend  spiritual 
truths  —  is,    I   believe,   latent   in   all    men. 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  135 

Persons  differ  in  the  amount  of  their  ca- 
pacity, or  rather  in  their  readiness  to  receive 
or  to  reject  these  things  ;  but  that  the  capacity 
is  in  all  men,  dim,  almost  dormant  it  may  be, 
yet  really  there  incipiently,  one  cannot  doubt. 
Whether  these  latent  elements  shall  grow 
and  live  and  become  powerful  within  us,  or 
be  stifled,  crushed,  extinguished,  depends  in 
some  measure  on  circumstances  which  we 
cannot  control,  —  such  as  our  home  training, 
our  companions,  our  education,  our  tempta- 
tions ;  but  in  some  large  measure  also  it  de- 
pends on  our  own  choice. 

Since  this  is  so,  since  so  much  lies  in  our 
power  as  to  what  we  shall  actually  become 
in  this  the  deepest  part  of  our  being,  it  be- 
comes an  important  inquiry  how  we  ought  to 
deal  each  with  ourselves,  and  how  we  can 
best  help  others  in  this  respect. 

First,  then,  it  is  quite  certain  that  if  from 
childhood  men  were  to  begin  to  follow  the 
first  intimations  of  conscience,  honestly  to 
obey  them  and  carry  them  out  into  act,  the 
power  of  conscience  would  be  so  strength- 
ened and  improved  within  them,  that  it 
would  soon  become,  what  it  evidently  is  in- 
tended to  be,  "  a  connecting  principle  be- 
tween the  creature  and  the  Creator."     This 


136  COMBINATION    OF 

light  that  lighteth  every  man,  if  any  were 
to  follow  it  consistently,  would  soon  lead  a 
man  up  and  on  to  a  clear  and  full  knowledge 
of  God,  and  to  the  formation  of  the  Divine 
image  within  himself.  But  none  do  so  fol- 
low these  heavenward  promptings,  all  more 
or  less  disobey  them,  thwart  them,  and  so  dim 
and  distort  their  spiritual  light.  A  few  there 
are,  however,  who,  though  not  free  from  the 
inborn  obliquity,  do  begin,  earlier  than  most 
men,  to  cherish  conscience,  and,  with  what- 
ever declensions,  do  on  the  whole  make  it 
their  main  endeavor  to  obey  it.  And  these 
are  led  on  quickly  and  early  to  the  serener 
heights  whence  they  see  spiritual  truths  more 
clearly,  vividly,  and  abidingly  than  ordinary 
men.  But  this  is  not  the  case  with  the  most. 
Even  those  who  may  never  have  fallen  into 
open  and  flagrant  sin,  have  yet  made  not  duty 
but  inclination  their  first  guide,  have  tried 
to  strike  innumerable  compromises  between 
self-pleasing  and  duty,  in  which  self  has  had 
much  the  best  of  the  bargain,  —  have  at  best 
tried  "  to  please  themselves  without  displeas- 
ing God."  And  so  by  going  on  in  this  self 
deceiving,  double-minded  way,  they  have 
weakened  not  strengthened,  dimmed  not 
brightened,  the  original  light  that  was  with- 


RELIGION  AND    CULTURE.  137 

In  them.  So  conscience  has  not  to  them  beei. 
an  open  avenue  of  communication  upward, 
a  direct  access  to  God. 

Without,  however,  dwelHng  on  the  innumer- 
able shades  and  ways  of  declension,  one  thing 
remains  true  for  all.  Whatever  our  past  life 
may  have  been,  at  whatever  point  of  life  and 
progress  we  may  be  standing,  if  we  would  not 
destroy  what  we  have  still  left  of  spiritual 
apprehension,  if  we  have  any  desire  to  grow 
in  spiritual  growth,  the  first  thing  to  be  done 
is  to  face  conscience,  —  to  be  entu-ely  honest 
with  ourselves,  to  cease  from  excusing  our- 
selves to  ourselves,  cease  from  subterfuges 
and  self-deceptions,  and  bring  ourselves,  our 
desires,  our  past  lives,  our  aims,  our  charac- 
ters into  the  light  of  conscience  and  of  God, 
and  there  desire  to  have  them  searched, 
sifted,  cleansed. 

To  be  thus  perfectly  single-hearted  and 
candid  is,  I  know,  a  most  difficult  attainment. 
Entire  candor  and  honesty  regarding  our- 
selves, instead  of  being  the  first,  is  one  of  the 
last  and  highest  attainments  of  a  perfectly 
fashioned  character.  But  though  this  is  true, 
it  is  also  the  beginning  of  all  well-doing; 
without  some  measure  of  it,  even  though 
^eak  and  unsteady,  no  good  thing  can  begin. 


138  COMBINATION  OF 

We  must  be  honest  with  ourselves,  desire  to 
know  the  truth  about  ourselves,  desire,  how- 
ever faintly,  to  be  better  than  we  are,  or 
there  is  no  bettering  possible  for  us.  But  if 
this  desire  is  in  us,  it  is  the  germ  out  of 
which  all  good  may  come.  The  first  honest 
actinop  out  of  this  desire  will  be  to  face  con- 
science,  as  I  said,  to  walk  according  to  the 
light  we  have,  to  do  the  immediate  thing  we 
know  to  be  right,  and  then  more  light  will 
follow.  We  shall  desire  to  get  beyond  mere 
notional  religion,  and  to  lay  a  hving  hold  on 
living  truth.  And  the  way  to  do  this  is  to 
take  our  common  thoughts  of  right  and 
wrono;  into  the  lio;ht  of  God,  and  connect 
them  with  Him,  and  act  them  out  in  the 
conviction  that  they  come  straight  from  Him. 
One  of  the  first  results  of  such  an  effort  to 
act  up  to  conscience  will  be  the  conviction 
that  there  is  in  us  something  essentially 
wrong  inwardly,  which  of  ourselves  we  are 
quite  unable  to  set  right,  —  that  to  do  this  is 
a  task  to  which  our  own  internal  resources 
are  wholly  inadequate.  And  the  more  hon- 
estly the  attempt  is  made,  the  more  entirely 
will  a  man  feel  that  the  powers  of  restoration 
he  needs  must  lie  out  of  himself,  above  him- 
self.    Of  such  powers  no  tidings  reach  him 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  139 

from  any  quarter  of  the  universe,  save  only 
from  the  Revelation  that  is  in  Christ.^ 

If,  then,  this  prime  essential  condition  of 
all  spiritual  progress  be  present,  namely, 
an  awakened  conscience,  there  are  various 
means  by  which  the  life  begun  can  be  fed 
and  nourished.  Here  again  I  must  repeat 
that  I  am  unwilling  to  trespass  on  the  duty 
of  the  Christian  minister,  but  I  trust  you  will 
bear  with  me,  if  I  briefly  mention  a  few 
things  which  perhaps  you  do  not  usually  as- 
sociate with  colle2;e  instruction.  For  other- 
wise  I  should  not  be  able  to  speak  the  truth 
on  this  matter,  and  I  believe  that  the  reality 
of  the  things  of  religion  suffers  greatly  from 
their  being  confined  solely  to  the  church  and 
pulpits,  and  being  considered  unseasonable 
and  out  of  taste  if  even  alluded  to  by  laymen 
and  at  other  times. 

1.  The  first  means,  then,  of  spiritual 
growth  is  Prayer ;  not  the  repeating  of  forms 
merely,  nor  the  saying  of  words,  but  the  hon- 
est, sincere,  often  voiceless  prayer,  which 
comes  into  real  contact,  heart  to  heart,  with 
Him  to  whom  we  pray.  To  pray  thus  is  not 
the  easy  thing  we  are  sometimes  apt  to  im- 
agine.    It  is  not  learned  in  a  day,  but  is  the 

1  Note  VII. 


140  COMBINATION  OF 

result  of  many  an  earnest,  devout  effort.  It 
requires  the  whole  being  to  concur,  —  the 
understanding,  the  emotions,  the  will,  the 
spirit.  It  is  an  energy  of  the  total  soul,  far 
beyond  any  mere  intellectual  act.  But  to 
the  spiritual  life  it  is  as  absolutely  essential 
as  inbreathing  of  fresh  air  is  to  the  lungs  and 
the  bodily  hfe. 

2.  Then  there  is  Meditation,  —  the  quiet, 
serious,  devout  fixing  of  the  mind,  from  time 
to  time,  on  some  great  truth  or  fact  of  re- 
ligion, holding  it  before  the  mind  steadily, 
silently  brooding  over  it  till  it  becomes  warm 
and  vital,  and  melts  into  us.  This  habit  of 
devout  meditation  is  recommended,  by  good 
men  who  have  practiced  it,  as  eminently 
useful.  But  it  is  not  much  in  keeping  with 
the  tone  of  the  present  day.  For  with  all 
our  pretensions  to  enlightenment,  are  we  not 
now  a  talking,  desultory,  rather  than  a  med- 
itative generation  ?  Whatever  other  mental 
acquirements  we  may  possess,  we  are  cer- 
tainly not  rich  in 

"  The  harvest  of  the  quiet  eye, 
That  sleeps  and  broods  on  its  own  heart." 

And  yet,  without  something  of  this  medita- 
tive habit,  it  is  impossible  to  lay  living  hold 
if  the  first  truths  of  morality  and  religion. 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  l4l 

It  were  well,  therefore,  if  we  should  betimes 
turn  aside  from  life's  bustle,  and  "  impose  a 
sabbath  "  on  our  too  busy  spirits,  that  the 
things  of  sense,  being  for  a  while  shut  out, 
the  unseen  things  may  come  into  us  with 
power. 

3.  Again,  few  things  are  more  helpful 
than  the  study  of  the  lives  of  the  most  emi- 
nent Christians  from  the  beginning.  The 
Roman  Church  has  her  lives  of  the  saints, 
some  of  them  of  doubtful  authenticity.  The 
Universal  Church  should  have  a  catena 
of  lives  of  the  best  men  of  each  ase,  from 
primitive  times  till  now.  It  would  include 
the  saintly  spirits  of  all  ages,  from  all  coun- 
tries, men  of  all  ranks,  of  every  variety 
of  temper,  taken  from  the  most  diverse 
churches.  Such  a  catena  would  be  the 
strongest  of  all  external  evidences.  It  would 
exhibit  Christianity,  not  so  much  as  a  system 
of  doctrines,  but  as  a  power  of  life,  adequate 
to  subdue  the  strongest  wills,  to  renew  the 
darkest  hearts,  to  leaven  the  most  opposite 
characters.  If  an  intimate  study  of  it  were 
more  common,  how  much  would  it  do  to  heal 
divisions,  to  deepen  and  enlarge  the  sympa- 
thies of  all  Christians,  by  the  exhibition  of 
their  common  spiritual  ancestry  ! 


142  COMBINATION   OF 

4.  But  if  such  an  intimacy  with  good  men 
gone  is  beneficial,  not  less  so  is  intercourse 
with  the  living,  our  elders,  or  companions 
more  advanced  than  ourselves.  They  will 
understand  what  I  mean,  who  have  ever 
known  any  one  in  whom  the  power  of  Chris- 
tian love  has  had  its  perfect  work.  As  from 
time  to  time  they  turned  to  these,  did  they 
not  find,  from  the  irregularities  of  their  own 
minds,  and  the  distractions  of  the  world, 
shelter  and  a  soothing  calm  ?  "  The  con- 
stant transpiration  "  of  their  characters  came 
home  with  an  evidence  more  direct,  more 
intimate,  more  persuasive  than  any  other. 
"  Whatever  is  right,  whatever  is  wrong,  in 
this  perplexing  world,"  one  thing  they  felt 
must  be  riglit :  to  live  as  these  lived,  to  be 
of  the  spirit  they  were  of.  Impressions  of 
this  kind  affect  us  more  powerfully  in  youth 
than  in  later  years,  yet  they  are  not  denied 
us  even  in  mature  manhood.  Happy  are 
those  who  have  known  some  such  friends. 
They  are  not  confined  to  any  age  or  station, 
but  may  be  found  among  poor  men  and  un- 
learned, as  readily  as  among  the  most  gifted. 
Let  us  cherish  the  society  of  such  persons 
while  we  may,  and  the  remembrance  of  them 
when  that  intercourse  is  over.     For  we  may 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  148 

be  quite  sure  of  this,  that  life  has  nothing 
else  to  give  more  pure,  more  precious,  than 
such  companionship. 

5.  But  the  last,  and  by  far  the  most  pow- 
erful, of  all  outward  aids  to  spiritual  growth, 
is  to  bring  the  heart  and  spirit  into  close  con- 
tact Avith  that  Life  which  is  portrayed  by  the 
four  Evangelists.  But  before  w^e  can  do  this 
satisfactorily,  some  may  say,  we  must  settle 
a  host  of  difficult  problems,  fight  out  our  way 
through  a  whole  jungle  of  vexed  and  intricate 
questions.  "  One  knows  the  interminable 
discussions  of  modern  criticisms  on  the  origin, 
the  authenticity,  and  the  mutual  relations  of 
the  four  Gospels.  But  for  our  present  pur- 
pose we  can  leave  all  these  questions  on  one 
side.  The  authenticity  of  the  evangelistic 
teaching  will  always  prove  itself  better  by  its 
own  nature  and  self-evidencing  power,  than 
by  any  criticism  of  the  documents."  To  say 
this  is  not  to  disparage  criticism,  which  has 
»ts  own  place  and  use.  But  that  place  is  not 
the  central  or  vital  one.  Criticism  is  not  re- 
ligion, and  by  no  process  can  it  be  substituted 
for  it.  It  is  not  the  critic's  eye,  but  the  child's 
heart,  that  most  truly  discerns  the  counte- 
nance that  looks  out  from  the  pages  of  the 
Gospels.     If  we  would  not  miss  or   distort 


144  COMBINATION  OF 

that  image,  let  us  come  to  it  with  an  open 
heart,  feeling  our  need  of  help.  Such  a  way 
of  studying  the  Gospels,  simple,  open-hearted, 
ceverent,  is  the  truest,  healthiest,  most  pen- 
etrating means  of  feeding  the  divine  life. 
When  once  by  long,  single-hearted,  steadfast 
contemplation  the  impression  has  graven  it- 
self within,  it  is  the  strongest,  it  is  the  most 
indelible  that  we  know.  Dogmatic  convic- 
tions may  change,  criticism  may  shift  its 
ground,  but  that  image  will  abide,  rooted  in 
the  deepest  seats  of  moral  life.  Whatever 
storms  may  shake  us  in  a  troubled  time,  this 
anchor,  if  any,  will  "hold."  Try  before  all 
things,  especially  while  you  are  young  and 
open  to  impressions,  to  bring  understanding, 
imagination,  heart,  conscience,  under  the 
power  of  that  master  vision.  That  image, 
or  rather  that  Person,  so  human,  yet  so  en- 
tirely divine,  has  a  power  to  fill  the  imagina- 
tion, to  arrest  the  affections,  to  deepen  and 
purify  the  conscience,  which  nothing  else  in 
the  world  has.  No  end  so  worthy  of  your 
literary  and  philosophic  training  here,  as  to 
enable  you  to  do  this  more  firmly  and  intel- 
ligently. All  criticism  which  tends  to  make 
the  lineaments  of  that  countenance  shine  out 
more  impressively  shall  be  welcome.    What- 


RELIGION  AND    CULTURE.  145 

ever  tends  to  dim  it,  or  remove  it  to  a  dis- 
tance, we  shall  disregard.  For  we  know 
with  a  certainty  which  far  transcends  any 
certainty  of  criticism,  that  He  is  true. 

But  if  we  would  deepen  and  perpetuate  in 
ourselves  the  impressions  thus  made,  we  must 
remember  that  the  surest  way  is  to  act  on 
them.     There  is,  I  fear,  a  tendency  in  all  of 
us  to  desire  clear  convictions  and  vivid  feel- 
ings about   these  things,  and  to  rest   there, 
content  with  convictions  and  feelings.     And 
so  they  come  to  naught.     If  they  are  not  to 
be  merely  head  notions  or  evanescent  feehngs, 
they  must  be  taken  into  the  will,  and  pass 
out  into  our  actions.     This  is  what  our  Lord 
said :  If  any  man  will  do  His  will,  he  shall 
know  of  the  doctrine  whether  it  be  of  God. 
Knowledge  is  to  follow  doing,  not  precede  it. 
In  order  to  understand,  we  must  commence 
by  putting   into   practice    what   we   already 
know.     "  Unfortunately  all  ages  and  parties 
have  gone  to  work  the  other  way,  adjourn- 
ing the  doing  of  the  doctrine,    hastening  to 
busy   themselves    with    the    theory    of    it." 
And  each  individual  man  must  be  aware  of 
this  tendency  in  himself,  the  desire  for  a  fully 
mapped-out  system  of  truth,  which,  after  he 
has  got  it,  he  will  begin  to  think  of  practic- 

10 


146  COMBINATION   OF 

ing.  But  we  shall  never  get  it  thus.  To  do 
what  we  know  to  be  right  first,  however  lit- 
tle that  may  be,  to  follow  out  the  light  we 
have,  this  is  the  only  way  to  get  more  light. 
Whatever  sood  thouo-hts  or  feelino;s  we  have, 
we  must  try  earnestly  to  embody  them  in 
act,  if  we  wish  to  grow.  But  to  will  and  do 
is  so  much  harder  than  to  speak  and  specu- 
late, and  even  feel.  This  is  the  reason  we 
turn  aside  from  the  former,  and  give  ourselves 
so  much  to  the  latter.  But  it  is  in  vain  we 
do  so.  In  spiritual  things  there  is  no  road 
to  hio-her  light  without  obedience  to  con- 
science.  This  gives  solidity  to  a  man's  char- 
acter, and  assurance  to  his  faith,  as  nothing 
else  does. 

I  have  dwelt  on  this,  the  spiritual  side  of 
our  su])ject,  at  what  may  seem  disproportion- 
ate length.  But  I  have  done  so  from  the 
belief  that  it  is  an  aspect  of  truth  which  at 
present  is  being  too  much  disregarded  by  the 
most  ardent  Culturists,  and  by  some  also  of 
the  strono-est  advocates  of  general  education. 
And  so  by  losing  siglit  of  it,  or  willfully  re- 
jecting it,  not  only  is  the  whole  economy  of 
the  human  spirit  deranged,  but  even  the 
purely  intellectual  faculties  and  powers  are 


RELIGION  AND  CULTURE.  147 

deprived  of  their  highest  objects.  Even 
among  those  who  do  not  take  the  entirely 
secular  view  of  life,  and  shut  out  religion 
altogether,  there  seems  to  be  a  tendency  to 
expect  religion  to  come  as  the  last  result  of 
a  large  and  laborious  culture,  - —  that,  in  short, 
we  may  end  with  it,  but  are  not  to  begin 
it,  —  that  Ave  must  first  learn  all  that  science 
can  teach  us  of  the  outer  world  of  nature, 
then  all  that  philosophy  can  teach  us  of  the 
the  inner  world  of  man,  then  all  that  history, 
and  the  philosophy  of  history,  can  teach  us 
of  the  progress  of  the  race,  and  then,  as  the 
last  consummation,  as  the  copestone  on  this 
great  edifice  of  knowledge,  theology  may 
possibly  be  built.  And  when  the  true  theol- 
ogy has  got  itself  achieved,  there  may  come 
religion;  that  is,  we  may  proceed  to  believe 
and  act  on  it.  I  do  not  say  that  this  view  is 
put  forth  in  so  many  words,  but  it  seems  to 
be  latent  in  many  minds,  and  implied  as  a 
first  principle  in  much  that  is  said  in  the 
present  time.  Not,  of  course,  by  the  multi- 
tude, —  it  is  not  among  them  that  such  a 
view  would  prevail,  —  but  it  is  entertained 
by  many  of  those  who  are  reputed  "  advanced 
thinkers,"  as  the  phrase  goes,  and  from  them 
it  filters  down  to  the  platforms  and  the  news- 


148  COMBINATION  OF 

papers,  and  helps  to  swell  that  most  weari- 
some chorus  of  self-laudation  which  is  ever- 
more  rising  up  about  this  most  wonderful  and 
enlightened  age.  Instead,  however,  of  com- 
ino;  as  the  last  consummation,  I  believe  it 
will  be  found  that,  in  far  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  men  who  ever  become  really  religious, 
the  sense  of  God  is  awakened  early,  a  germ 
of  life  growing  and  expanding  from  childhood, 
round  which  learning  and  culture  gathered 
afterwards.  This  I  believe  to  be  the  natural, 
Lnd  by  far  the  most  frequent,  history  of  the 
best  men.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  post- 
pone spiritual  things  till  we  have  completed, 
or  even  far  advanced,  our  investigations, 
there  is  great  danger  that  they  will  never 
come  at  all.  I  do  not  say  that  some  men,  a 
very  few,  may  not  have  awakened  to  the 
practical  sense  of  God  late  in  life,  and  only 
after  long  wanderings  in  the  world  of  thought 
without  Him.  God  has  many  ways  of  bring- 
ing men's  spirits  to  Himself,  and  we  dare  not 
venture  to  say  He  shall  lead  any  man  in  this 
way  and  not  in  that.  Only  this  we  can  say, 
that  for  men  to  arrive  at  divine  truth  as  the 
last  stage  in  a  long  process  of  culture  and  in- 
vestigation, is  not  His  usual  way  of  leading 
men,  and  that  when  it  does  take  place  it  comes 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  149 

not  in  the  way  of  gradual  sequence,  not  as  it 
were  the  last  step  in  a  long  induction.  Not 
as  a  natural  sequence,  but  rather  as  a  con- 
vulsion, will  such  revelation  be  likely  to  come, 
with  a  confession  of  failure,  with  a  rending  of 
old  habits  of  thought  and  of  godless  associa- 
tions, with  the  acknowledgment  that  much 
of  life  has  been  wasted,  and  that  the  chief 
thing  Culture  has  taught  is  that  not  in  itself 
is  God  to  be  found. 

Speculation,  we  may  believe,  "  reaches  its 
final  rest  and  home  in  faith,"  but  the  faith 
has  generally  been  present  in  the  heart  before 
the  speculation  began,  and  has  accompanied 
it  more  or  less  consciously  through  all  its 
travellings.  Where  the  faith  has  only  ap- 
peared in  the  end,  it  will  be  because  specula- 
tion has  acknowledged  itself  unable  livingly 
to  lay  hold  on  God,  and  has  resigned  the 
searcher  over  to  another  higher  than  itself. 

The  practical  upshot  of  all  I  have  said  is 
this :  Do  not  let  us  adjourn  being  reHgious 
till  we  have  become  learned.  It  may  be  to 
some  a  tempting,  but  it  is  a  dangerous  exper- 
iment. If  we  wish  really  to  be  good,  and  to 
know  the  good,  we  should  begin  early,  begin 
at  once. 

I  may  have  dwelt  too  long  on  this.    But  it 


150  COMBINATION   OF 

is  because  I  see  so  strong  a  tendency  abroad 
to  begin  at  the  wrong  end,  to  deal  first  and 
prominently  with  the  intellectual  side  of 
things,  and  to  expect  all  good  from  that,  that 
I  feel  constrained  to  urge  on  all  who  hear 
me,  especially  on  the  young,  to  avoid  this,  to 
beo-in  as  well  as  to  end  with  God  revealed  in 
Christ,  and  communion  with  Him.  So  shall 
they  have  their  whole  natures  grounded, 
established,  braced  for  the  stern  siftings 
which  in  this  age  assuredly  await  us. 

It  is  hicrh  time  now  to  ask  how  Culture 
and  Religion  act  and  react  on  each  other. 
Side  glances  have  been  taken  at  this  subject 
throughout  these  lectures.  To  give  a  full 
and  systematic  view  of  all  their  relations  I 
have  not  proposed,  even  if  I  had  the  power. 
A  few  words,  however,  must  be  said. 

If,  as  we  saw,  Religion,  or  the  impulse  in 
man  to  seek  God,  and  Culture,  or  the  im- 
pulse in  man  to  seek  his  own  highest  perfec- 
tion, both  come  from  the  same  Divine  source, 
it  is  clear  that  as  they  are  in  themselves  — 
that  is,  as  God  sees  them  —  there  can  be  no 
opposition,  there  must  be  perfect  harmony 
between  them.  Both  together,  they  must 
be  working  towards   that  full  revelation  of 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  151 

God  and  that  good  of  man  towards  which  we 
beheve  creation  moves.  But  as  soon  as  we 
regard  them  not  absolutely,  but  as  man  has 
made  them,  that  is,  as  they  have  appeared 
in  history,  immediately  we  find  that  they 
have  not  always  conspired  harmoniously 
towards  one  great  end,  that  for  long  periods 
they  have  moved  on  separate  lines,  that 
sometimes  they  have  come  into  actual  col- 
lision. And  the  reason  of  this  is  obvious. 
Few  men  can  take  in  more  than  one  point  of 
view  at  a  time,  none  can  habitually  embrace 
and  maintain  a  universal  and  absolute  view 
of  things.  And  so  it  has  come  to  pass  that 
these  two  powers,  as  they  start  from  differ- 
ent centres,  have  continued  each  to  work  on 
under  the  impulse  of  the  leading  idea  which 
gave  it  birth,  without  taking  much  account 
of  the  idea  which  animated  the  other.  Cul- 
ture, with  its  eye  fixed  on  man's  perfection, 
has  been  busy  with  the  means  that  tend 
towards  this,  that  is  appropriating  the  large 
results  which  human  effort,  thought,  and  ex- 
perience have  gathered  from  past  centuries. 
Religion,  on  the  other  hand,  starting,  not 
from  the  view  of  man's  perfection,  but  of 
God's  existence,  in  the  consciousness  of  this, 
however   dim  and  unenlightened,  has   been 


152  COMBINATION   OF 

entirely  absorbed  in  the  results  that  flow  out 
of  this  relation,  —  the  sense  of  dependence, 
the  duty  of  obedience  and  self-surrender,  and 
man's  total  inability  to  meet  this  claim. 
And  in  its  absorption  it  has,  for  light,  looked 
' — inward,  to  the  monitions,  however  ob- 
scm'e,  of  conscience  ;  outward,  to  whatever 
aid  nature  and  history  supply ;  upward,  to 
that  light,  higher  than  nature,  which  has 
come  direct  from  heaven.  And  thus  each, 
self-enwrapt,  has  taken  little  account  of  its 
neighbor. 

But  if  these  two  forces  are  to  cease  from 
their  isolation,  and  combine,  as  we  may  hope, 
towards  some  better  result  than  the  world 
has  yet  seen,  the  question  arises.  Are  they 
to  work  as  two  coordinate  and  equipollent 
powers,  or  is  one  to  be  subordinate  to  the 
other,  and  if  so,  which?  To  this  question 
the  old  answer  is  still,  we  feel,  the  true  one. 
To  Religion  belongs  of  right  the  sovereign 
place,  and  this  because  it  is  a  more  direct 
emanation  from  the  Divine  source  ;  it  finds 
its  response  in  the  deeper  places  of  our  be- 
ing; it  is  the  earlier  manifestation  in  the 
history  of  the  race ;  the  earlier  in  the  life  of 
the  individual,  and  it  will  be  the  last.  But 
though  its  place  is  primary,  it  cannot  be  inde- 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  158 

pendent  of  thought  and  knowledge  ;  nay,  the 
rehgion  of  each  age  must,  in  a  large  measure, 
be  conditioned  by  the  state  of  knowledge  ex- 
isting in  that  age.  We  see  this  in  the  past 
history  of  religion,  and  we  see  how  fruitless, 
I  should  rather  say  how  disastrous,  have 
been  the  effects,  when  religion  has  tried  to 
close  itself  ao-ainst  the  risino;  tide  of  knowl- 
edge.  And  the  lesson  which  the  past 
teaches,  religious  men  would  do  well  to  learn, 
and  keep  an  open  side  to  the  influx  of  all  the 
new  knowledije  which  each  a<2:e  achieves,  to 
appropriate  this,  and  absorb  it  into  their  relig- 
ious convictions.  So  far  from  being  jealous 
or  suspicious  of  ascertained  scientific  truths, 
or  even  indifferent  to  them,  they  should  feel 
that  such  prejudices  are  wrong,  that  they  are 
bound  to  welcome  all  such  truths,  being  sure 
that,  in  as  far  as  they  are  truths,  God  means 
them  to  be  known,  and  wills  them  to  be  in- 
corporated into  our  thoughts  of  Him  and  of 
His  ways. 

And  here  I  cannot  better  express  my  own 
thought  than  by  quoting  words  which  Bishop 
Temple  lately  spoke  on  this  subject.  "  I 
have,"  he  said,  in  a  public  address  delivered 
in  his  own  diocese,  "  a  real  conviction  that  all 
this  study  of  science,  rightly  pursued,  comes 


154  COMBINATION   OF 

from  the  providence  of  God ;  that  it  is  in 
accordance  with  His  will  that  we  should 
study  His  works,  and  that  as  He  has  given 
us  a  spiritual  revelation  in  His  Word,  so  also 
has  He  given  us  a  natural  revelation  in  His 
creation.  I  am  convinced  that  there  is  noth- 
ing to  lose,  but  everything  to  gain,  by  a  true 
and  careful  study  of  God*s  works ;  that  the 
more  light  we  can  get,  the  more  cultivation 
of  our  understanding,  and  the  more  thorough 
discipline  of  our  intellect  by  the  study  of  all 
this  which  God  has  scattered  in  such  wonder- 
ful profusion  around  us,  so  much  the  better 
shall  we  be  able  not  only  to  serve  Him  in 
our  vocation,  but  to  understand  the  meaning 
of  His  spiritual  revelations.  I  am  convinced 
that  all  light  of  whatever  kind  is  good,  and 
comes  from  God ;  that  all  knowledge  comes 
from  Him,  and  can  be  used  in  His  service ; 
that  nothing  which  really  adds  to  the  knowl- 
edo-e  of  the  world  is  for  a  moment  to  be  de- 
spised;  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  should  be 
the  effort  of  all  who  undertake  to  instruct 
their  brethren  in  religious  truth,  to  show  that 
we  feel  that  religious  truth  and  secular  truth 
are  not  only  capable  of  being  reconciled,  but 
really  come  from  the  same  God  who  is  the 
God  of  all  truth.     Therefore,  so  far  from  de- 


RELIGION   AND   CULTURE.  155 

siring  that  there  should  be  divorce  between 
these  two,  I  should  wish,  on  the  contrary, 
that  every  effort  should  be  made  by  all  who 
are  concerned  in  religious  teaching,  to  per- 
vade the  study  of  science  with  their  own  re- 
ligious feeling;  to  study  science  with  the 
constant  recollection  of  that  God  whose 
works  are  the  subject  of  science ;  to  study 
science  with  minds  perpetually  uplifted 
towards  Him  who  is  the  author  both  of  or- 
der and  of  beauty ;  to  study  the  laws  of  na- 
ture with  a  perpetual  recollection  of  Him 
who  ordained  them.  1  know  that  it  is  not 
only  possible,  but  that  both  science  and  re- 
ligion will  gain  by  the  union." 

The  truth  enforced  in  these  words  is  so 
obvious  that  hardly  any  one  will  think  of 
directly  denying  it,  however  little  many  may 
be  ready  to  act  on  it.  One  thing,  however,  I 
would  have  you  observe,  that  they  presup- 
pose the  thought  of  God  taken  into  science, 
and  not  first  found  there.  It  may  be  well  to 
dwell  a  little  on  this,  and  to  illustrate  these 
general  views  somewhat  more  in  detail.  For, 
stated  generally,  the  truth  above  expressed 
may  sound  like  a  truism.  It  is  only  when 
we  come  to  particular  points  that  the  diffi- 
culties really  begin. 


166  COMBINATION  OF 

It  lies,  we  know,  at  the  root  of  all  religion, 
to  believe  that  this  system  of  things  is  really 
from  God,  that  the  Divine  thought  presided 
at  its  origin,  and  that  the  same  is  present 
upholding  and  carrying  forward  this  beau- 
tiful order  with  which  we  are  now  encom- 
passed. Any  so-called  conclusions  of  science 
which  deny  this,  and  suggest  another  origin 
of  the  world  than  the  will  and  thought  of 
God,  religion  must  reject  as  subversive  of  its 
first  principle.  But,  this  granted,  religion 
must  leave  it  to  science  to  discover  what  is 
the  method  which  the  Divine  thought  has 
followed,  what  have  been  the  processes  by 
which  it  has  evolved  the  order  we  now  be- 
hold. All  facts  really  established  by  science 
religion  must  receive,  nay,  more,  ought  to 
welcome,  and  incorporate  into  its  own  view 
of  the  universe,  allowing  them  to  modify  that 
view  in  as  far  as  this  may  be  necessary.  In 
refusing  to  do  this,  in  looking  with  suspicion, 
if  not  with  positive  hostility,  on  the  fresh  dis- 
coveries of  each  age,  religious  persons,  since 
the  days  of  Galileo  downwards,  have  often 
erred,  and  given  just  grounds  for  complaint 
to  the  advocates  of  science.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  must  be  said  that  scientific,  or  rather 
quasi-scientific,  persons  have  sometimes  been 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  157 

hasty  to  thrust  on  religion  for  acceptance  a 
number  of  crude  hypotheses,  as  if  they  were 
scientific  verities.  For  the  soHd  body  of 
science  seems  to  throw  out  before  it  a  pre- 
tentious penumbra  of  hypotheses  and  pre- 
suppositions, which  often,  in  the  name  of 
science,  call  on  religion  to  surrender  at  dis- 
cretion. It  is  not,  however,  the  really  scien- 
tific, the  original  discoverers,  who  for  the 
most  part  deal  in  these.  Such  men  dwell  in 
the  solid  body  of  science,  and  are  careful  not 
to  stray  beyond  it.  The  penumbra  I  speak 
of  is  mainly  tenanted  by  another  sort,  —  per- 
sons of  small  scientific  capacity,  but  of  busy 
minds,  greedy  of  novelties,  and  rapid  to  ex- 
temporize big  philosophies  out  of  the  mate- 
rials which  science  furnishes.  From  such 
comes  the  assertion,  often  heard  nowadays, 
that  miracle  is  impossible.  This,  however, 
though  urged  in  the  name  of  science,  is  no 
scientific  truth  at  all.  It  is  only  a  large  and 
pretentious  generalization,  bred  no  doubt  out 
of  the  scientific  atmosphere  which  more  or 
less  envelops  even  popular  thought,  but 
wholly  unwarranted  by  genuine  science. 
When  religion  is  called  on  to  accept  this 
nostrum  of  the  destructive  critics,  it  is  not 
orejudice  or  narrowness,  but  truth,  that  com- 


158  COMBINATION  OF 

pels  her  to  meet  it  with  a  direct  denial. 
Such  an  assertion  has  nothing  to  support  it 
but  a  priori  assumption  ;  it  is  not  warranted 
by  anything  we  know,  and  is  foreign  to  the 
moderation  of  true  science.  Nothing  that 
has  been  ascertained  by  physical  inquiry, 
nothing  that  mental  philosophy  has  made 
good,  would  justify  such  dogmatism.  It  im- 
plies the  possession  of  a  much  wider,  more 
entire  knowledge  of  the  universe  than  any 
yet  attained,  or  perhaps  that  will  be  attained 
in  our  present  state.  Religion,  therefore,  is 
at  one  with  sound  philosophy  in  refusing  to 
admit  such  an  assumption.  And  this  quite 
apart  from  that  other  consideration,  that  if 
true  it  would  relegate  to  the  region  of  myth 
one  half  of  the  Gospel  histories,  and  render 
the  other  half  of  no  authority  if  it  were  im- 
bedded in  such  a  mass  of  fable.  The  state- 
ment, then,  that  miracles  are  in  themselves 
impossible,  being  a  wholly  groundless  assump- 
tion, the  question  of  their  actual  occurrence 
becomes  one  of  purely  historical  evidence. 
What  that  evidence  is  has  been  often  stated, 
and  will  be  restated  from  time  to  time 
according  as  the  shifting  views  of  each  age 
require.  But  perhaps  men's  belief  in  that 
evidence  can  never  be  determined  entirelv  on 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  159 

objective  grounds.  The  strength  of  the  evi- 
dence will  always  be  differently  estimated  by 
different  minds,  but  owing  to  other  considera- 
tions, and  especially  according  as  they  have 
a  latent  belief  or  disbelief  in  their  possibility 
and  likelihood. 

Again,  when  we  are  told  that  to  the  mod- 
ern scientific  sense  the  idea  of  God  the 
Father  resolves  itself  into  that  of  "  the  uni- 
versal order,"  or  into  ''  that  stream  of  ten- 
dency by  which  all  things  strive  to  fulfill  the 
law  of  their  being,"  how  is  religion  to  deal 
with  this  assertion  ?  Or  again,  when  instead 
of  Christ  we  are  offered  as  the  modern  equiv- 
alent "  an  absent  and  unseen  power  of  good- 
ness ?  "  It  is  not  resistance  to  modern  in- 
telligence, but  defense  of  the  very  "core" 
of  spiritual  life,  that  makes  religion  withstand 
such  intrusions  of  so-called  science  or  criti- 
cism into  her  own  inmost  recesses.  Once 
again  we  must  repeat,  the  things  of  the 
Spirit  are  truly  apprehended  only  by  the 
spirit  and  the  conscience  of  man.  If  God  is 
known  then  only  truly  when  the  heart  com- 
munes with  Him,  substitutes  for  religious 
entities  which  would  make  such  communion 
impossible  are  by  this  very  fact  disproved. 
Those  abstractions  which  criticism  and  phi- 


160  COMBINATION   OF 

losophy,  divorced  from  the  Spirit,  offer,  are 
but  pale  and  lifeless  shadows.  The  things 
of  revelation,  the  truths  which  St.  John  and 
St.  Paul  lived  by,  and  all  Christian  men 
since  have  tried  to  live  by,  when  pared  down 
by  these  modern  processes,  are  extinct.  No 
doubt  science  and  philosophy  have  some- 
thing to  do  with  shaping  the  intellectual 
forms  in  which  spiritual  truths  shall  be  ex- 
pressed. But  when  criticism  pretends  to 
penetrate  into  the  inner  essence  of  spiritual 
truths,  and  to  supply  us  with  piodern  equiv- 
alents for  them,  it  is  then  time  to  remind  it 
that  it  is  overstepping  the  limits  which  are 
proper  to  it.  For  it  is  to  the  spirit  and  con- 
science of  men  that  spiritual  truth  makes  its 
appeal,  and  by  these  in  the  last  resort  it 
must  be  apprehended.  It  will  be  said,  I 
know.  How  are  we  to  ascertain  what  really 
are  those  realities  to  which  the  conscience 
and  the  spirit  of  men  witness,  seeing  that 
with  reo;ard  to  these  men  are  so  divided  ? 
I  am  aware  of  the  difficulty.  Yet  we  can- 
not in  deference  to  it  recede  from  the  first 
principle,  that  spiritual  things  are  to  be  spir- 
itually discerned  ;  that  the  coming  home  of 
a  religious  truth  to  the  spirit  of  a  man,  and 
fitting  into  it,  is  to  that  man  the  highest  evi- 


RELIGION  AND    CULTURE.  161 

dence  of  its  truth,  and  that  this  is  the  thing 
we  should  each  seek  first.  He  who  lias  felt 
the  self-evidencing  power  of  truth  will  know 
this  to  be  its  best  proof.  Where  this  is  not 
present,  intellectual  arguments  will  do  little, 
as  these  may  be  adduced  equally  on  that  side 
or  on  this.  It  may  be  that  we  have  felt  little 
of  this  evidencing  power  of  truth,  —  that  there 
are  few  truths  which  have  so  come  home  to 
us.  But  all  men  have  felt  some  measure  of 
it.  ■  They  have  at  least  their  sense  of  right 
and  wrong  in  its  more  obvious  bearings. 
Whoso  shall  try  to  live  and  act  on  this,  so 
using  the  small  light  he  has,  he  shall  receive 
more. 

If  it  still  be  urged.  Such  inward  conviction 
is  at  best  personal  to  the  individual  who  has  it, 
we  wish  for  some  test  of  religious  truth  which 
shall  be  impersonal  and  universal ;  it  may  be 
replied,  that  while  the  highest  evidence  in 
the  thino-s  of  relio-ion  must  necessarily  rest 
on  personal  grounds,  there  are  other  tests 
more  creneral,  thouo;h  of  a  secondary  and  sub- 
ordinate  kind  as  far  as  cogency  is  concerned. 
Some  such  outward  test  may  be  found  by 
observino;  what  are  those  reliorious  truths 
which  the  best,  most  spiritually-minded  men 
of  all  ages  have  chiefly  laid  to  heart.  As 
11 


162  COMBINATION    OF 

Aristotle  found  a  clew  towards  a  moral  stand- 
ard by  taking  the  general  suffrage  of  the 
morally  wisest  men,  so  may  we  do  in  some 
measure  with  regard  to  spiritual  things.  Still, 
though  this  may  help  us  somewhat,  in  the 
last  resort  we  must  fall  back  on  the  truth 
that  light  is  self-evidencing,  —  as  light  natu- 
ral, so  light  spiritual.  Seeing,  feeling  is  be- 
lieving, and  the  conviction  thus  produced 
must  be  an  inward  and  personal  thing,  not 
readily  nor  adequately  represented  in  the 
language  of  the  intellect.  To  adopt  the 
words  of  a  profound  thinker,  whom  I  have 
already  quoted  in  these  lectures,  "  An  intel- 
lectual form  our  spiritual  apprehensions  must 
receive,  that  the  demand  of  our  intellectual 
nature  may  be  met.  But  still  that  which  is 
spiritual  must  be  spiritually  discerned,  and  I 
would  not  seek  to  recommend  the  doctrine 
of  the  atonement  by  what  might  be  called 
brino;ino;  it  down  to  the  level  of  the  under- 
standing.  I  seek  rather  to  raise  the  under- 
standing to  that  which  is  above  it,  and  to 
that  exercise  of  thought  on  spiritual  things  in 
which  we  feel  ourselves  brought  near  to 
what  is  divine  and  infinite,  and  made  par- 
takers in  the  knowledge  of  the  love  which 
passeth  knowledge." 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  163 

Or  in  the  words  of  another  great  living 
teacher,  belonging  to  a  different  school :  — 
"  The  inward  witness  to  the  truth  lodged  in 
our  hearts  is  a  match  for  the  most  learned 
infidel  or  sceptic  that  ever  lived.  In  spiritual 
things,  the  most  acute  of  reasoners  and 
most  profound  of  thinkers,  the  most  instructed 
in  earthly  knowledge,  is  nothing  except  he 
has  also  within  him  the  presence  of  the 
Spirit  of  truth.  Human  knowledge,  though 
of  great  power  when  joined  to  a  pure  and 
humble  faith,  is  of  no  power  when  opposed 
to  it."  I  am  aware  that  words  like  these, 
the  "  inward  witness,"  "  the  witness  of  God's 
Spirit  with  man's  spirit,"  may  be  used  as 
catch- words  in  a  way  that  makes  them  mean- 
ingless. But  to  this  abuse  they  are  liable 
only  in  common  with  all  words  expressive 
of  high  and  spiritual  things.  When  two 
such  men  as  Dr.  M'Leod  Campbell  and  Dr. 
Newman,  so  differently  trained,  and  with 
views  so  opposed  in  many  things,  combine  to 
speak  of  '*  the  witness  of  the  Spirit,"  and  to 
urge  men  to  seek  it,  we  may  be  quite  sure 
that  it  is  not  any  mere  hearsay  they  are  re- 
peating, but  that  they  are  speaking  of  some- 
which  they  know  and  feel  to  be  a  reality. 

Before  passing  entirely  from  this    subject 


164  COMBINATION  OF 

let  me  ask,  Have  faltli  and  worship  to  do 
with  the  known  or  with  the  unknown  ?  It 
is  sometimes  said  that  faith  and  worship  only 
begin  where  knowledge  ends.  At  other 
times  we  hear  the  exact  contrary  asserted,  — 
that  we  cannot  believe  any  truth  or  worship 
any  being  of  which  we  have  not  complete 
understanding,  that  in  fact  the  circle  of  defi- 
nite knowledge  and  of  possible  faith  are 
coextensive.  These  assertions  seem  both 
equally  wide  of  the  truth.  It  is  in  knowl- 
edge that  faith  and  worship  begin.  We 
believe  in  God,  and  we  worship  God  because 
of  that  which  He  has  made  known  to  us  of 
Himself,  in  conscience  first,  and  then  more 
fully  in  revelation.  Indeed,  the  very  sim- 
plest acceptance  of  the  truths  of  conscience, 
and  the  obeying  of  them,  instead  of  choosing 
the  pleasures  of  sense,  is  essentially  of  the 
nature  of  faith.  And  the  knowledge  thus 
brought  home  to  the  spirit,  it  feels  to  be  pos- 
itive knowledge,  —  a  circle  of  light  in  which 
it  dwells.  True  it  is  that  what  is  thus 
known  reaches  out  on  all  sides  to  what  is 
unknown, — the  light  is  on  all  sides  encom- 
passed with  darkness.  But  the  existence  of 
the  surroundino;  darkness  does  not  make  the 
light,  such  as  it  is,  to  be  less  light.      And 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  165 

the  faith  and  worship  do  not  confine  them- 
selves within  the  region  of  light,  but  pass  out 
into  the  outer  circle,  —  go  on  from  tlie  known 
to  the  unknown.  But  in  this  they  are  doins 
no  violence  to  reason  ;  nay,  they  are  fulfilling 
the  behest  of  the  highest  reason,  which  feels 
instinctively  that  while  there  is  something 
of  God  which  is  within  our  ken,  there  must 
be  much  more  which  stretches  beyond  it. 
At  the  same  time  it  feels  equally  assured 
that  what  lies  beyond  our  present,  perhaps 
even  our  future,  vision,  will  never  contradict 
that  which  is  within  it  —  that  the  true  knowl- 
edge which  the  conscience  and  spirit  now 
have  will  never  be  put  to  shame. ^ 

But  while  these  two  elements,  the  known 
and  the  unknown,  coexist,  and  we  believe 
always  will  coexist,  in  faith  and  worship,  the 
relation  in  which  the  two  elements  stand  to 
each  other  must  undergo  some  change  with 
the  widening  of  human  knowledge  and  expe- 
rience. The  moral  conceptions  of  the  race 
have  been,  in  the  course  of  ages,  not  radi- 
cally changed,  but"  expanded,  deepened,  pu- 
rified by  many  agencies.  Our  moral  and 
religious  ideas  are  not  unaffected  even  by 
discoveries  in  regions  which  at  first  sight 
might  seem  most  remote  from  them. 
1  Note  VIII. 


166  COMBINATION  OF 

The  view  of  the  universe  as  science  leads 
us  to  conceive  it  must  react  on  our  thoughts 
of  God.  Opening  out  before  us  tlie  vast 
scale  on  which  He  works,  and  acquainting 
us  with  some  of  the  methods  of  His  working, 
it  counteracts  the  limitations  which  are  apt 
to  arise  from  the  human  forms  under  which 
we  think  of  Him.  These  forms  are  neces- 
sary and  true.  It  is  only  because  man  has 
in  himself  some  image  of  God  that  he  can 
think  of  Him  at  all.  But  round  this  true 
conception,  so  formed,  there  are  apt  to 
gather  accretions  from  man's  weakness  and 
imperfection,  to  which  the  expansive  views 
of  science  furnish  a  wholesome  antidote. 
Again,  do  men's  views  of  morality,  as  time 
goes  on,  get  more  deep,  more  just  and  hu- 
mane ?  And  to  this  result  nothing,  I  be- 
lieve, has  so  much  contributed  as  eighteen 
centuries  of  Christianity,  notwithstanding  all 
the  corruptions  it  has  undergone.  Then 
this  improved  moral  perception,  from  what- 
ever sources  derived,  reacts  directly  on 
relicrious  belief,  bv  removincr  obstructions 
that  hide  from  us  true  views  of  God,  and 
enabling  us  to  think  of  Him  more  nearly  as 
He  is.  As  our  conception  of  what  true 
righteousness  consists  in  improves,  so  must 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  167 

our  thouo-lit  of  Him  who  is  the  JRio-hteous 
One.  Idolatry  has  been  said  to  be  the  pre- 
ferring of  an  image  of  God  which  we  feel  to 
be  imperfect,  but  which  has  adapted  and 
contracted  itself  to  our  weakness,  instead  of 
pressing  on  to  the  most  perfect  image  attain- 
able, in  the  light  and  heat  of  which  our  im- 
perfections may  be  exposed  and  burned  up. 
In  short,  it  is  the  retaining  between  our 
hearts  and  God  an  imperfect  image  of  Him, 
when  it  is  in  our  power  to  attain  to  a  truer 
and  more  perfect  vision.  Every  increase  of 
knowledge,  whether  gathered  from  history, 
or  from  the  world  without,  or  from  the  world 
within,  may  be  a  help  towards  forming  a 
better  conception  of  God's  nature  and  of  His 
ways,  and  ought  to  be  so  used.  If  we  refuse 
either  to  increase  our  knowledo-e  that  we 
may  so  use  it,  or  neglect  to  turn  it  when  in- 
creased to  this  its  highest  purpose,  and  so 
are  content  to  rest  in  less  worthy  thoughts 
of  the  Divine  character,  can  we  then  excuse 
ourselves  from  the  sin  of  idolatry  ?  One  who 
really  has  confidence  in  truth  —  truth  alike 
of  science,  of  philosophy,  of  history,  and  of 
faith  —  will  desire  to  see  truth  souo;ht  and 
advanced  along  all  the  diverse  lines  on  which 
't  is  to  be  found.     He  may  not  see  the  point 


168  COMBINATION  OF 

at  which  all  these  lines  converge,  but  he  has 
perfect  faith  that  they  do  converge,  whether 
he  sees  it  or  not.  He  can  be  satisfied  with 
seeing  but  a  little  for  a  time,  assured  that  he 
will  yet  see  that  little  open  on  a  fuller  day. 
Believe  in  God,  and  bid  all  knowledge  speed. 
Sooner  or  later  the  full  harmony  will  reveal 
itself,  the  discords  and  contradictions  disap- 
pear. 

Before  closing  this  whole  subject  let  me 
again  repeat,  what  has  been  more  than  once 
hinted  already,  that  Culture,  when  it  will  not 
accept  its  proper  place  as  secondary,  but  sets 
up  to  be  the  guiding  principle  of  life,  forfeits 
that  which  mio;ht  be  its  highest  charm.  In- 
deed,  even  when  it  does  not  professedly  turn 
its  back  on  faith,  yet  if  it  claims  to  be  para- 
mount, it  will  generally  be  found  that  it  has 
cultivated  every  other  side  of  man's  nature 
but  the  devout  one.  There  is  no  more  for- 
lorn sight  than  that  of  a  man  highly  gifted, 
elaborately  cultivated,  with  all  the  other 
capacities  of  his  nature  strong  and  active,  but 
those  of  faith  and  reverence  dormant.  And 
this,  be  it  said,  is  the  pattern  of  man  in 
which  Culture,  made  the  chief  good,  would 
most  likely  issue.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
it  assumes  its  proper  place,  illumined  by  faitli, 


RELIGION  AND    CULTURE.  169 

and  animated  by  devout  aspiration,  it  ac- 
quires a  dignity  and  depth  which  of  itself  it 
cannot  attain.  From  faith  it  receives  its 
highest  and  most  worthy  objects.  It  is  chas- 
tened and  purified  from  self-reference  and 
conceit.  It  is  prized  no  longer  merely  for  its 
own  sake,  or  because  it  exalts  the  possessoi 
of  it,  but  because  it  enables  him  to  be  of  use 
to  others  who  have  been  less  fortunate.  In 
a  word,  it  ceases  to  be  self-isolated,  and 
seeks  to  communicate  itself  as  widely  as  it 
may.  So  Culture  is  transmuted  from  an  in- 
tellectual attainment  into  a  spiritual  grace. 
This  seems  the  light  in  which  all  who  are 
admitted  to  a  higher  cultivation  should  learn 

CD 

to  regard  their  endowments,  whatever  they 
be.  Why  is  a  small  moiety,  with  no  peculiar 
claim  on  society,  so  highly  favored,  taken  for 
a  while  from  the  dust  and  pressure  of  the 
world,  and  set  apart  in  calm  retreats  like 
these,  that  here  they  may  have  access  to  the 
best  learning  of  the  time  ?  Not  certainly 
that  we  should  waste  these  precious  hours  in 
sloth,  neither  that  we  should  merely  make 
our  bread  by  learning ;  not  that  we  should 
seek  and  enjoy  it  as  a  selfish  luxury,  and, 
piquing  ourselves  on  the  enlightenment  and 
refinement  it  brings,  look  down  with  disdain 


170  COMBINATION    OF 

on  the  illiterate  crowd  ;  but  that,  when  we 
have  been  cultivated  ourselves,  we  should  go 
into  the  world  and  do  what  we  can  to  impart 
to  others  whatever  good  thing  we  ourselves 
have  received.  There  is  a  temptation  inci- 
dent to  the  studious  to  seclude  themselves 
from  others,  and  lose  themselves  in  their 
own  thoughts  and  books.  But  we  must  try 
to  resist  this,  and  remember  that  since  we 
have  freely  received,  we  are  bound  freely  to 
give.  This  it  is  which  makes  Culture  a 
really  honorable  and  beneficent  power. 

But  there  is  a  point  of  view  from  which 
this  whole  subject  may  be  regarded,  and  I 
cannot  close  these  lectures  without  alluding 
to  it.  There  is  a  higher  vantage-ground, 
seen  from  which  all  these  balancings  between 
Culture  and  Rehgion,  man's  <^fFort  and  God's 
w^orking,  would  disappear,  and  all  relations 
would  at  once  fall  into  their  right  place.  If 
there  is  reason  to  believe  that  God  Himself 
is  the  great  educator,  and  that  His  purpose, 
in  all  His  dealings  with  men,  is  to  educate 
them  for  Himself,  what  a  new  light  would  be 
thrown  on  all  the  ground  over  which  we  have 
travelled!  This  is  not  the  place  to  enter 
Into  an  examination  of  the  statements  of 
Scripture  which   may  bear  on  this   subject. 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  171 

This  only  may  be  said,  the  belief  that  it  is 
God's  purpose  to  bring  man  out  of  the  dark- 
ness of  his  evil  and  ignorance  into  the  light 
of  His  own  righteousness  and  love,  seems 
every  way  consistent  with  what  we  know  of 
His  character  as  revealed  in  Christ.  It  is  in 
harmony  with  the  whole  tenor  of  His  life  and 
teaching  who  said,  "  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from 
the  earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  myself." 
In  this  purpose  there  is  a  door  of  hope  opened 
for  all  humanity. 

But  then  comes  the  thought  that,  though 
the  door  is  opened,  all  do  not  enter  by  it. 
Multitudes  never  know  that  such  a  door 
exists  ;  many  more  know,  and  pass  it  by. 
That  this  should  be  God's  purpose  and  yet 
that  men  should  have  the  power  to  resist  this 
purpose,  to  close  their  wills  against  it,  this, 
next  to  the  existence  of  evil  at  all,  is  the 
greatest  of  all  mysteries.  I  have  no  wish, 
indeed  it  is  of  no  use,  to  try  to  conceal  it ;  it 
is  a  dark  outstanding  fact  which  must  strike 
every  one.  If  it  is  the  Divine  purpose  to 
educate  man,  it  is  but  too  evident  that  a 
great  multitude,  perhaps  the  majority  of  men, 
leave  this  earth  without,  as  far  as  we  can 
see,  the  rudiments  of  the  Divine  education 
being  even  begun  in  them.     Not  to  think  of 


172  COMBINATION   OF 

their  case  is  impossible  for  any  man,  and  the 
more  generous  and  sympathetic  any  one  is, 
the  more  heavily  will  it  weigh  on  him.  It 
must  be  owned  that  there  are  times  when 
this  thought  becomes  to  those  who  dwell  on 
it  very  overpowering.  There  are  some  in 
whom  it  seems  to  "  stagger  "  all  their  pow- 
ers of  faith.  Scripture  offers  no  solution  of 
this  great  perplexity,  reason  is  helpless  before 
it,  human  systems,  in  trying  to  explain  it, 
only  make  it  worse.  What,  then,  are  we  to 
do  ?  We  can  but  fall  back  on  that  ancient 
word  of  faith,  "  Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  do  right?  "  We  must  leave  it  to  God 
Himself  to  solve,  —  assured  that  in  the  end 
He  will  solve  it  perfectly,  will  supremely 
justify  Himself. 

Still,  notwithstanding  all  that  to  us  seems 
like  failure,  the  belief  in  this  purpose  of  God 
to  train  for  Himself  all  who  will,  is,  if  we  can 
but  apprehend  it,  a  thought  full  of  strength 
and  comfort.  It  is  not  only  the  highest  hope, 
but  the  only  real  hope  for  humanity  that  ex- 
ists. It  embraces  everything  that  is  good  in 
the  Culture  theory,  and  how  much  more ! 
If  Culture  were  what  Culturists  announce  it 
to  be,  the  one  hope  for  men,  what  a  very 
mpiety  of  the  race  are  they  to  whom  it  is 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  17S 

open !  A  few  prepared  for  it  in  youth,  with 
health,  leisure,  some  resources,  have  access  to 
it.  But  what  of  all  the  others,  even  if  the 
brio-htest  dreams  of  educationists  and  ad- 
vanced  politicians  were  to  be  fulfilled?  The 
hope  that  is  in  Christianity,  far  short  as  the 
accomplishment  has  hitherto  fallen  of  the 
ideal,  is  still  in  its  very  nature  a  hope  for  all, 
and  it  does  actually  reach  multitudes  whom 
Culture  must  leave  out.  How  many  are  the 
occurrences  of  life  which  Culture  can  make 
nothing  of,  which  it  must  abandon  in  dis- 
pair  ?  There  are  a  thousand  circumstances, 
I  might  say  the  larger  portion  of  the  stuff 
life  is  made  of,  out  of  which  Culture  can  ex- 
tract nothing.  What  has  it  to  say  to  *'  pov- 
erty, destitution,  and  oppression,  to  pain  and 
suffering,  diseases  long  and  violent,  all  that  is 
frio-htful  and  revolting  ?  "  What  word  can 
it  speak  to  the  heart-weary  and  desponding, 
those  for  whom  life  has  been  a  failure,  who 
have  no  more  hope  here  ?  But  it  is  just 
where  mere  Culture  is  powerless  that  the 
faith  that  One  higher  than  ourselves  is  train- 
ing  us,  comes  in  most  consolingly.  Those 
untoward  things,  of  which  human  effort  can 
make  nothing,  failure,  disappointment,  sick- 
ness, have  often  ere  now  been  felt  by  suf 


174  COMBINATION  OF 

ferers  to  be  parts  of  the  discipline  by  wlii'^h 
He  was  training  them  for  Himself.  And  this 
faith  has  many  a  time  had  power  to  lighten, 
sometimes  it  has  even  irradiated,  things 
which  else  would  have  been  insupportable. 
To  adapt  the  words  of  Wordsworth  to  a 
purpose  not  alien  to  their  own,  —  in  faith 
a  power  abides  which  can  feed 

"  A  calm,  a  beautiful,  and  silent  fire, 
From  the  incumbrances  of  mortal  life, 
From  error,  disappointment,  —  nay,  from  guilt; 
And  sometimes,  so  relenting  justice  wills, 
From  palpable  oppressions  of  despair." 

It  is  a  "  many-chambered  "  school,  that  in 
which  God  trains.  None  are  excluded  from 
it,  all  are  welcome.  It  has  room  for  all  gifts, 
all  circumstances,  all  conditions.  It  makes 
allowance  for  defects  and  shortcomings  which 
are  ruin  in  this  world.  Trained  in  this  school 
many  have  reached  a  high  place,  who  have 
had  no  "tincture  of  letters."  Most  of  us 
must  have  known  some,  especially  in  the 
humbler  places  of  society,  who  had  not  any 
of  this  world's  learning,  had  never  heard  even 
the  names  of  the  greatest  poets  and  philoso- 
phers, yet  who,  without  help  from  these,  had 
been  led,  by  some  secret  way,  up  to  the  se- 
renest,  most  beautiful  heights  of  character. 
It    is    indeed    a    many-chambered     school. 


RELIGION  AND   CULTURE.  176 

These  were  led  throucrli  some  of  its  cliambers 
to  their  end,  we  are  beino;  led  throuo-h  others. 
To  those  who,  like  ourselves,  have  large  op- 
portunities of  Culture  placed  within  their 
reach,  these  are  the  instruments  of  the  divine 
discipline.  It  is  part  of  that  discipline  to  put 
large  opportunities  in  men's  hands,  and  to 
leave  it  to  themselves  whether  they  will  use 
or  neglect  them.  There  shall  be  no  coercion 
to  make  us  turn  them  to  account.  Occasions 
of  learning  and  self-improvement  come,  stay 
with  us  for  a  while,  then  pass.  And  the 
wheels  of  time  shall  not  be  reversed  to  bring 
them  back,  once  they  are  gone.  If  we  neg- 
lect them,  we  shall  be  permanent  losers  for 
this  life.  We  cannot  say  how  much  we  may 
be  losers  hereafter.  But  if  we  do  what  we 
can  to  use  them  while  they  are  granted,  we 
shall  have  learnt  one  lesson  of  the  heavenly 
discipline,  and  shall  be  the  better  prepared 
for  the  others,  whether  of  action  or  endur- 
ance, which  are  yet  to  come. 

This  view  of  our  life  as  a  process  of  edu- 
cation, which  God  seeks  to  carry  on  in  each 
man,  is  not,  it  may  be  granted,  the  view  of 
God  and  of  His  dealino-s  with  us  which  sug- 
gests  itself  when  men  first  beo;in  to  think 
seriously.     Neither  is  it  one  which  it  is  easy 


176  COMBINATION   OF 

to  hold  steadily  amid  all  the  distractions  of 
time,  or  to  defend  against  all  objections  that 
may  be  urged  from  the  anomalies  that  sur- 
round us.  But  I  think  it  is  one  which  will 
more  commend  itself  as  people  advance.  It 
will  approve  itself  as  setting  forth  an  end 
which  seems  altogether  worthy  of  Him  who 
made  us. 

And  now  I  have  come  round  to  one  of  the 
leading:  thoucrhts  with  which  I  set  out.  Those 
who  heard  my  first  lecture  may  remember 
that  it  was  stated  as  the  end  of  Culture  to 
set  before  the  young  a  high  and  worthy  aim 
or  ideal  of  life,  and  to  train  in  them  the  pow- 
ers necessary  to  attain  it.  It  was  further 
stated  that  while  each  man  should  have  in 
view  an  ideal  which  he  should  strive  to  reach, 
what  that  ideal  should  be  is  to  be  determined 
for  each  man  by  the  natural  gifts  he  is  en- 
dowed with,  and  by  the  circumstances  in 
which  he  finds  himself  placed.  That  end  of 
Culture  was  then  stated,  and  we  passed  on. 
But  now  I  think  the  belief  in  a  divine  edu- 
cation open  to  each  man  and  to  all  men, 
takes  up  into  itself  all  that  is  true  in  the  end 
proposed  by  Culture,  supplements  and  per- 
fects it.  It  is  right  that  we  should  have  an 
aim  of  our  own,  with  something  peculiar  in  it, 


RELIGION  AND    CULTURE.  177 

determined  by  our  individuality  and  our  sur- 
roundings ;  but  this  may  readily  degenerate 
into  exclusive  narrowness,  unless  it  has  for  a 
background  the  great  thought,  that  there  is 
a  kingdom  of  God  within  us,  around  us,  and 
above  us,  in  which  we,  with  all  our  powers 
and  aims,  are  called  to  be  conscious  workers. 
Towards  the  forwarding  of  this  silent,  ever- 
advancing  kingdom,  our  little  work,  what- 
ever it  be,  if  good  and  true,  may  contribute 
something.  And  this  thought  lends  to  any 
calling,  however  lowly,  a  consecration  which 
is  wanting  even  to  the  loftiest  self-chosen 
ideals.  But  even  if  our  aim  should  be  frus- 
trated and  our  work  come  to  naught,  yet  the 
failure  of  our  most  cherished  plans  may  be 
more  than  compensated.  In  the  thought 
that  Ave  are  members  of  this  kingdom,  al- 
ready begun,  here  and  now,  yet  reaching 
forward  through  all  time,  we  shall  have  a 
reserve  of  consolation  better  than  any  which 
success  without  this  could  give.  When  we 
are  young,  if  we  are  of  an  aspiring  nature, 
we  are  apt  to  make  much  of  our  ideals,  and 
to  fancy  that  in  them  we  shall  find  a  good 
not  open  to  the  vulgar.  And  then  that  uni- 
rersal  kingdom,  which  embraces  in  itself  all 
true  ideals,  is,  if  not  wholly  disbelieved,  yet 

12 


178  RELIGION  AND    CULTURE. 

thought  of  as  remote.  But  as  life  goes  on, 
the  ideals  we  set  before  us,  even  if  attained, 
dwindle  in  importance,  and  that  kingdom 
grows.  We  come  to  feel  that  it  is  indeed  the 
substance,  those  the  shadows.  Were  it  not 
well,  then,  to  begin  with  the  substance, to  learn 
to  apprehend  the  reality  of  that  kingdom 
which  is  all  around  us  now,  whether  we 
recognize  it  or  not,  —  to  take  our  aims  and 
endeavors  into  it,  that  they  may  be  made 
part  of  it,  however  small,  —  to  surrender  our- 
selves to  it,  that  our  lives  mav  do  some  thin  cj 
towards  its  advancement,  and  that  so  we  may 
become  fellow-workers,  however  humble, 
with  all  the  wise  and  good  who  have  gone 
before  us,  and  with  Him  who  made  them 
what  they  were  ?  Only  they  who  early  thus 
begin 

*'  Through  the  world's  long  day  of  strife 
Still  chant  their  morning  song.'* 


APPENDIX. 


Note  I.  —  Page  24. 

The  following  passages  from  Fichte's  Lectures  on 
the  Nature  of  a  Scholar  (translation)  illustrate  the 
moral  and  religious  root  which  underlies  all  true  cul- 
ture. Though  these  Lectures  were  meant  to  be  pop- 
ular, they  are  still  colored  by  the  language  of  the 
author's  philosophic  system.  By  the  "  Divine  Idea," 
especially,  Fichte  seems  to  have  meant,  not,  as  we 
might  suppose,  our  ideas  about  God,  but  rather  what 
we  should  express  by  the  words  the  Divine  Nature, 
or  even  God  :  — 

"  In  every  age,  the  kind  of  education  and  spiritual 
culture,  by  means  of  which  the  age  hopes  to  lead 
mankind  to  the  knowledge  of  the  ascertained  part  of 
the  Divine  Idea,  is  the  learned  culture  of  the  age ; 
and  every  man  who  partakes  in  this  culture  is  the 
scholar  of  the  age.  .  .  .  The  whole  of  the  training 
and  culture,  which  an  age  calls  learned  education,  is 
only  a  means  towards  a  knowledge  of  the  attainable 
portion  of  the  Divine  Idea,  and  is  only  valuable  in  so 
far  as  it  actually  is  such  a  means,  and  truly  fulfills  its 
purpose."  .  .  . 

"  He  only  shall  be  esteemed  as  a  scholar  who, 
through  the  learned  culture  of  his  age,  has  actually 


180  APPENDIX. 

attained  a  knowledge  of  tlie  Idea,  or  at  least  strives 
with  life  and  sti-ength  to  attain  it.  Through  the 
learned  culture  of  his  age,  I  say ;  for,  if  a  man  with- 
out the  use  of  this  means,  can  arrive  at  a  knowledge 
of  the  Idea  by  some  other  means,  (and  I  am  far  from 
denying  that  he  may  do  so),  yet  such  an  one  will  be 
unable  either  to  communicate  his  knowledge  theo- 
retically, or  to  realize  it  immediately  in  the  world 
according  to  any  well-defined  rule,  because  he  must 
want  that  knowledge  of  his  age,  and  of  the  means  of 
operating  upon  it,  which  can  only  be  acquired  in 
schools  of  learning." 

Again,  "  Either  the  scholar  has  actually  laid  hold 
of  the  Divine  Idea,  in  so  far  as  it  is  attainable  by 
man,  or  of  a  particular  part  of  it,  —  has  actually  laid 
hold  of  it,  and  penetrated  into  its  significance,  until  it 
stands  lucid  and  distinct  before  him,  so  that  it  has 
become  his  own  possession,  an  element  in  his  person- 
ality ;  and  then  he  is  a  complete  and  finished  scholar, 
a  man  who  has  gone  through  his  studies  :  Or  he  as 
yet  only  strives  and  struggles  to  attain  a  clear  insight 
into  the  Idea  generally,  or  into  a  particular  portion 
of  it,  from  which  he,  for  his  part,  will  penetrate  the 
whole :  —  already,  one  by  one,  sparks  of  light  arise  on 
every  side,  and  disclose  a  higher  world  before  him  ; 
but  they  do  not  yet  unite  into  one  indivisible  whole, 
—  they  vanish,  as  they  came,  without  his  bidding, 
and  he  cannot  yet  bring  them  under  the  dominion  of 
his  will ;  —  and  then  he  is  a  progressive,  a  self-form- 
ing scholar, — a  student.  Tliat  it  be  really  the  Idea 
which  is  either  possessed  or  struggled  after  is  com- 
mon to  both  of  these  ;  if  the  striving  is  only  after 
the  outward  form,  the  mere  letter  of  learned  cul- 
ture then  we  have;    if  the  round  is    finished,  the 


APPENDIX.  181 

complete,  if  it  is  unfinished,  the  progressive  Bun-- 
glerr 

Again,  "  Man  is  not  placed  in  the  world  of  sense 
alone,  but  the  essential  root  of  his  being  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  God.  Hurried  along  by  sense  and  its 
impulses,  the  consciousness  of  this  Life  in  God  may 
be  readily  hidden  from  him ;  and  then,  however 
noble  may  be  his  nature,  he  lives  in  strife  and  dis- 
union with  himself;  in  discord  and  unhappiness, 
without  true  dignity  and  enjoyment  of  life.  But 
when  the  consciousness  of  the  true  source  of  his  ex- 
istence first  rises  upon  him,  and  he  joyfully  resigns 
himself  to  it,  till  his  being  is  steeped  in  the  thought, 
then  peace  and  joy  and  blessedness  flow  in  upon  his 
soul.  And  it  lies  in  the  Divine  Idea  that  all  men 
must  come  to  this  gladdening  consciousness,  —  that 
the  outward  and  tasteless  Finite  Life  may  be  per- 
vaded by  the  Infinite,  and  so  enjoyed  ;  and  to  this 
end,  all  who  have  been  filled  with  the  Divine  Idea 
have  labored  and  shall  still  labor,  that  this  conscious- 
ness, in  its  purest  possible  form,  may  be  spread  through- 
out the  race." 

This  language  is  not  exactly  that  of  Christian 
theology,  but  it  is  nearer  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
than  most  utterances  of  British  philosophy. 


Note  n.  —  Pase  34. 


This  passage  occurs  in  The  Freeness  of  the  Gospel, 
oy  the  late  Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen.  When  the 
first  of  these  lectures  was  delivered,  he  was  yet  alive. 
Before  the  closing  one  was  given  he  had  breatlied  his 


182  APPENDIX. 

last,  on  Sunday,  the  20tli  March,  1870.  The  Freeness 
of  the  Gospel  was  first  published  nearly  fifty  years 
ago.  For  long  the  author  had  abstained  from  repub- 
lishing this  or  any  of  those  other  works  which  so 
deeply  touched  the  minds  of  many  in  Scotland 
during  the  last  generation.  But  in  his  latter  days 
he  had  allowed  a  new  edition  of  the  work,  from 
which  this  quotation  is  made,  to  be  prepared  by  a 
friend  and  even  himself  dictated  some  corrections. 
This  edition  has  appeared  since  the  death  of  the 
revered  author. 


Note  IH.  —  Pane  36. 


For  some  of  the  thoughts  here  expressed  on  the 
influence  of  Greece,  I  am  indebted  to  the  first  of  Dr. 
Newman's  Lectures  on  University  Subjects.  Especially 
in  what  I  have  said  of  Homer,  I  have  ventured  to 
adopt  not  only  Dr.  Newman's  thought,  but  also  some 
of  his  expressions.  The  passage  in  the  original  lec- 
ture is  so  graceful,  and  puts  an  old  subject  in  so  new 
a  light,  that  it  is  here  given  more  at  length. 

"  In  the  country  which  has  been  the  fountain-head 
of  intellectual  gifts,  in  the  age  which  f)receded  or  in- 
troduced the  first  formations  of  Human  Society ;  in 
an  era  scarcely  historical,  we  may  dimly  discern  an 
almost  mythical  personage,  who,  putting  out  of  con- 
sideration the  actors  in  Old  Testament  history,  may 
be  called  the  first  Apostle  of  Civilization.  Like  an 
Apostle  in  another  order  of  tilings,  he  was  poor  and 
5,  wanderer,  and  feeble  in  the  flesh,  though  he  waa 
to  do  such  great  things,  and  to  live  in  the  mouths 
of  a  hundred  generations,  and  a  thousand  tribes.     A 


APPENDIX.  183 

blind  old  man  whose  wanderings  were  such  that, 
when  he  became  famous,  his  birthplace  could  not  bo 
ascertained. 

'*  Seven  famous  towns  contend  for  Homer  dead, 
Through  which  the  living  Homer  begged  his  bread." 

Yet  he  had  a  name  in  his  day,  and,  little  guessing 
in  what  vast  measures  his  wish  would  be  answered, 
he  supplicated  with  a  tender  human  feeling,  as  he 
wandered  over  the  islands  of  the  ^gean  and  the 
Asian  coasts,  that  those  who  had  known  and  loved 
him  would  cherish  his  memory  when  he  was  absent. 
Unlike  the  proud  boast  of  the  Roman  poet,  if  he 
spoke  it  in  earnest,  '  Exegi  monumentum  are  pcren- 
nius,'  he  did  but  indulge  the  hope  that  one  whose 
coming  had  been  expected  with  pleasure  might  ex- 
cite regret  when  he  went  away,  and  be  rewarded  with 
the  sympathy  and  praise  of  his  friends,  even  in  the 
presence  of  other  minstrels.  A  set  of  verses  remains, 
which  is  ascribed  to  him,  in  which  he  addresses  the 
Delian  women  in  the  tone  of  feeling  I  have  described. 
*  Farewell  to  you  all,'  he  says,  '  and  remember  me 
in  time  to  come  ;  and  when  any  one  of  men  on  earth, 
a  stranger  from  far,  shall  inquire  of  you,  0  maid- 
ens, who  is  the  sweetest  of  minstrels  hereabout, 
and  in  whom  you  most  delight  ?  then  make  answer 
modestly.  It  is  a  blind  man,  and  he  lives  in  steep 
Chios.' 

"  The  great  poet  remained  unknown  for  some  cen- 
tm'ies,  —  that  is,  unknown  to  what  we  call  fame.  .  .  . 
At  length  an  Athenian  prince  took  upon  him  the  task 
of  gathering  together  the  scattered  fragments  of  a 
genius  which  had  not  aspired  to  immortality,  of  re- 
ducing them  to  writinnr,  and  of  fitting  them  to  be  the 


184  APPENDIX. 

text-book  of  ancient  education.  Henceforth  the 
vagrant  ballad-singer,  as  he  might  be  thought,  was 
submitted,  to  his  surprise,  to  a  sort  of  literary  can- 
onization, and  was  invested  with  the  office  of  form- 
ing the  young  mind  of  Greece  to  noble  thoughts  and 
bold  deeds.  To  be  read  in  Homer  soon  became  the 
education  of  a  gentleman  ;  and  a  rule,  recognized  in 
her  free  age,  remained  as  a  tradition  in  the  times  of 
her  degradation." 

Dr.  Newman,  it  will  be  seen,  holds  by  the  old  and 
natural  belief  that  Homer  was  a  man,  not  a  myth. 
The  great  Teutonic  hoax,  which  has  so  long  glamoured 
the  minds  of  the  learned,  seems  to  be  somewhat 
losing  its  hold.  It  is  a  fair  enough  question  whether 
the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  are  the  work  of  the  same 
author  ;  also,  whether  certain  passages  in  these  books 
may  not  be  interpolations,  and  whether  the  great 
creative  poet  may  not  have  incorporated  into  his 
work  many  fragments  of  earlier  minstrelsy.  But  to 
suppose  that  each  of  two  long  continuous  poems,  the 
greatest  in  their  kind  the  world  has  seen,  were  the 
product  not  of  one  mind,  but  of  many  minds,  work- 
ing either  with  design  or  at  haphazard,  is  too  much 
for  plain  men  to  take  in. 


Note  IV.  —Page  58. 


The  best  exposition  which  I  have  met  with  of  the 
inadequacy  of  Phenomenalism,  as  a  total  account 
of  the  whole  matter,  is  to  be  found  in  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Grcte's  Exploratio  PhUosophica  (published  at 
Cambridge  in  1865).  In  that  work  he  thinks  over 
once  again  the  iundamental  problems  that  lie  at  the 


APPENDIX.  185 

root  of  all  philosophy.  And  though  the  style  may  be 
felt  to  be  lengthy,  tentative,  and  hesitating,  yet  aL 
who  care  for  the  subjects  he  treats  of  will  readily 
forget  this  for  the  entire  freshness,  honesty,  and  orig- 
inality of  the  thinking.  Ilis  book  reads  as  though 
you  overheard  a  real  thinker  thinking  aloud.  And 
much  of  what  may  be  regarded  as  defect  of  style 
may  be  put  down  to  the  entire  candor  and  thor- 
oughness of  the  writer,  caring  far  more  for  what  he 
has  to  say,  than  for  the  manner  in  which  he  says  it. 

The  following  are  some  of  the  contrasts  he  draws 
between  the  phenomenal  and  the  philosophical  point 
of  view :  — 

"  The  phenomenal  verb  is  *  Is  *  in  tlie  sense  of 
<  exist,'  with  immediate  applications  of  it  to  certain 
objects  of  our  thought  itself,  the  nature  of  the  exist- 
ence, the  grounds  of  our  supposition  of  it,  not  enter- 
ing into  consideration.  The  verb  of  philosophy,  or 
when  our  point  of  departure  is  consciousness  or  our 
own  personality,  is  one  which  has  scarcely  existence 
in  popular  language:  we  might  consider  it  to  be 
*  feel '  used  neutrally,  or  '  feel  ourselves  '  (the  Greek 
Ixi^^  with  an  adverb.  In  this  consciousness,  in  the 
philosopher's  point  of  view,  is  the  root  of  all  cer- 
tainty or  knowledge.  The  problem  of  philosophy 
is  the  finding  the  relation  between  existence  and 
this.  .  .  . 

"  The  phenomenal  assumption  is  that  the  world  of 
reality  exists  quite  independently  of  being  known  by 
any  knowing  beings  in  it,  just  the  same  as  it  would 
exist  if  there  were  no  knowledge  or  feeling  in  any 
members  of  it.  The  Berkeleian  idealism  is  little 
more  than  the  easy  demonstration  that  this  view, 
from   a  philosophical  standing  point,  is  untenable  ] 


186  APPENDIX. 

that  tlie  notion  of  existence,  as  distinguished  from 
perceivedness,  is,  nakedly  and  rudely  stated,  as  ab- 
horrent to  the  philosopher  as  that  of  perceivingness 
and  will,  in  any  part  of  the  matter  the  laws  of  which 
he  is  seeking,  is  to  the  phenomenalist. 

"I  think  the  best  way  of  our  conceiving  this  phe- 
nomenalist spirit,  carefully  avoiding,  in  our  intelleC' 
tual  conception  of  it,  any  moral  approbation  or  dis- 
approbation of  it,  is  to  conceive  what  exists  existing 
without  being  known,  —  without  any  mind,  or  any- 
thing like  mind,  having  originated  it  or  having  been 
concerned  with  its  origination  or  arrangement,  so  that 
when  we  find  in  it  anything  which  we  should  describe 
as  order  or  form,  or  composition,  it  is  not  that  kind 
of  order,  or  anything  like  it,  which  we  mean  when 
we  speak  of  putting  together  anything  ourselves  with 
a  meaning  and  a  reason.  The  phenomenalist  maxim 
must  be  to  put  nothing  (mentally)  in  the  universe 
beyond  what  we  find  there  ;  and  what  we  find  there 
phenomenally  is  that,  and  nothing  more,  which  com- 
municates with  the  various  natural  elements,  nervous 
matter,  ...  of  which  our  bodies  are  composed.  We 
really,  phenomenally,  have  no  right  to  speak  of 
order,  arrangement,  composition,  ...  in  the  uni- 
verse, all  which  are  ideas  belonging  to  our  own  con- 
sciousness of  active  and  constructive  powers.  The 
great  rule  of  phenomenalism  is  to  be  sure  that  we 
do  not  do  that  which  we  always  naturally  do  do, 
humanize  the  universe,  recognize  intelligence  in  it, 
have  any  preliminary  faith,  persuasion,  suppositions 
about  it,  find  ourselves,  if  I  may  so  speak,  at  all  at 
home  in  it,  think  it  has  any  concern  with  us."  —  (pp. 
14,  15). 

"  The  point  of  the  difi'erence  is  that  in  the  formei 


APPENDIX.  187 

(the  phenomenalist  point  of  view)  we  look  upon  what 
we  can  find  out  by  physical  research  as  ultimate  fact, 
as  far  as  we  are  concerned,  and  upon  conformity  with 
this  as  the  test  of  truth  ;  so  that  nothing  is  admitted 
as  true  except  so  far  as  it  follows  by  some  process  of 
inference  from  this.  In  opposition  to  this,  the  con- 
trasted view  is  to  the  effect,  that  for  philosophy,  for 
our  entire  judgment  about  things,  we  must  go  be- 
yond this,  or  rather  go  further  back  than  it.  The 
ultimate  fact  really  for  us  —  the  basis  upon  which  all 
rests  —  being,  not  that  things  exist,  but  that  we 
know  them,  /.  e.,  think  of  them  as  existing.  The 
order  of  things  in  this  view  is  not  existence  first,  and 
then  knowledge ;  but  knowledge  (or  consciousness 
of  self)  first,  involving  or  implying  the  existence  of 
what  is  known,  but  logically  at  least  prior  to  it,  and 
conceivably  more  extensive  than  it.  In  the  former 
view  knowledge  about  things  is  looked  upon  as  a 
possibly  supervening  accident  to  them  or  of  them. 
In  the  latter  view,  their  knowableness  is  a  part,  and 
the  most  important  part,  of  their  reality  or  essential 
being.  In  the  former  view,  mind  or  consciousness  is 
supposed  to  follow,  desultorily  and  accidentally,  after 
matter  of  fact.  In  the  latter  view,  mind  or  conscious- 
ness begins  with  recognizing  itself  as  a  part  of  an 
entu'e  supposed  matter  of  fact  or  universe,  and  next 
as  correspondent,  in  its  subjective  character,  to  the 
whole  of  this  besides  as  object,  while  the  understand- 
ing of  this  latter  as  known,  germinates  into  the  notion 
of  the  recognition  of  other  mind  or  reason  in  it."  — 
(p.  59.) 

"  We  are  really  conscious  of  a  non  ego  as  of  an 
ego,  we  are  not  therefore  the  only  existence,  and  from 


188  APPENDIX. 

considering  that  in  evolving  (by  thought)  order  and 
character,  or  somethingness  out  of  mere  disorder,  — 
objects  out  of  prae-objectal  possibility  —  we  are  not 
the  only  mind  at  work.  As  much  as  we  feel  our- 
selves mind,  we  feel  ourselves  one  mind,  and  that 
there  may  be  others.  We  know  things,  therefore, 
not  only  because  loe  are,  but  because  there  are  things 
that  can  be  known ;  because  there  are  things  which 
have  in  them  the  quality  or  character  of  knowable- 
ness,  L  e.,  a  counterpart  or  adaptedness  to  reason ; 
which  is,  however  we  like  to  describe  it,  the  same  as 
a  mind  or  reason  so  far  insubstantiated  or  embodied." 
-  (p.  58). 


Note  V.  —  Page  65. 

For  this  view  of  the  double  aspect  of  all  human 
action  —  at  least  for  the  form  in  which  it  is  here  put 
—  I  desire  to  own  my  obligation  to  a  very  thought- 
fhl  and  searching  criticism  of  Mr.  Huxley's  Lecture 
which  shortly  after  that  Lecture  was  published  ap- 
peared in  the  Spectator.  It  is  one  of  many  papers 
which  from  time  to  time  appear  in  that  periodical, 
full  of  thought  on  the  highest  subjects,  which  is  at 
once  robust  and  reverential.  Without  in  any  meas- 
ure indorsing  the  political  views  of  that  periodical, 
I  may  be  allowed  here  to  express  my  admiration  of 
the  papers  to  which  I  allude.  They  are  exclusively 
on  philosophical  or  religious  subjects,  or  rather  on 
that  border  land  where  philosophy  and  religion 
meet.  One  may  not  always  agree  with  all  that 
they  contain.  But  no  thoughtful  person,  whatever 
Ms  own  views  may  be,  can  read  them  without  being 


APPENDIX.  189 

braced  in  mind  and  spirit  by  their  atmosphere  of 
thought. 

If  I  had  at  hand  the  number  of  the  Spectator  which 
contained  the  paper  on  Mr.  Huxley's  Lecture,  I  should 
have  made  some  extracts  from  it  in  this  place.  But 
in  default  of  this,  I  may  be  allowed,  as  it  is  pertinent 
to  the  subject  of  my  second  Lecture,  to  make  the 
following  quotation  from  the  Spectator  of  July  30, 
1870:  —  "The  most  dangerous  form  of  unbelief  at 
the  present  time  is  what  we  may  call  the  '  scientific,' 
which  says,  when  it  contents  itself  with  negatives, 
*  we  do  not  find  God  or  any  of  the  spiritual  things  of 
which  you  speak  in  the  world  with  which  we  have  U 
do ; '  which  goes  further  when  it  chooses  to  be  aggres 
sive,  and  says  '  your  theology  is  very  much  in  the  way 
of  the  improvement  and  advance  of  the  human  race, 
and  we  will  put  it  out  of  the  way.'  To  this,  in  eithei- 
mood,  all  theologies  are  alike.  ...  It  is  with  thif^ 
that  the  battle  must  be  fought  out,  and  to  any  one 
who  can  furnish  weapons  for  it  our  deepest  gratitude 
is  due." 

To  furnish  such  weapons  is  a  task  I  do  not  now 
venture  to  undertake.  There  are,  however,  certain 
fundamental  questions  which  may  be  suggested  for 
the  consideration  of  those  who  are  in  the  state  of 
scientific  unbelief  above  described,  and  who  yet  are 
candid  men,  open  to  conviction.  It  may  be  asked, 
Do  you  really  hold  that  the  world  with  which  science 
deals  is  the  whole  world  of  existence  ?  If  there  is  a 
world  of  truth  outside,  or  perhaps  rather  inside,  of 
that  which  science  is  cognizant  of,  is  no  part  of  it  to 
be  believed  till  science  has  made  it  her  own,  and 
given  us  scientific  grounds  for  believing  it  ?  You 
(jay  that  you    do  not  find  God  in  the  world   with 


190  APPENDIX. 

which  you  have  to  do.  Is,  however,  this  world  of 
yours  the  only  world  that  really  exists  ?  Is  it  even 
the  most  important  world,  —  important,  that  is,  if  you 
consider  all  that  man  is,  all  that  history  proves  him 
to  be  and  to  need  V 

Or  to  put  the  same  questions  from  another  side. 
Are  you  quite  sure  that,  with  all  your  science,  you 
have  all  the  faculties  necessary  for  apprehending  all 
truth  awake  and  active  within  you  ?  May  there  not 
be  other  capacities  of  your  being,  than  those  scientific 
ones,  which  capacities  you,  in  your  entire  absorption 
in  science,  have  hitherto  allowed  to  lie  dormant  ? 
And  if  so,  may  not  these  be  just  the  very  capacities 
required  to  make  you  feel  the  need  of  God,  and  to 
enable  you  to  find  Him  ? 

Tlie  truly  scientific  man  reverences  all  facts.  Is 
not  this  one  worth  his  consideration  V  The  verdict 
of  all  ages  has  pronounced,  that  the  exclusively 
scientific  man,  he  in  whom  the  scientific  side  is 
everything,  and  the  spiritual  side,  that  is  heart,  con- 
science, spiritual  aspiration,  go  for  nothing,  is  but 
half  a  man,  developed  only  on  one  side  of  his  nature, 
and  that  not  the  highest  side.  If  God  is  to  be  appre- 
hended at  all  in  a  vital  way,  and  not  merely  as  an 
intellectual  abstraction,  it  must  be  first  from  the  spir- 
itual side  of  our  being,  by  the  conscience,  the  spirit, 
the  reverence  that  is  in  man,  that  he  is  mainly  to  be 
approached.  This  is  the  centre  of  the  whole  matter. 
From  this  side  we  must  begin,  however  much  may 
afterwards  be  added  by  experience  and  acquired 
knowledge. 

I  had  got  thus  far  in  writing  this  note  when  I  met 
with  the  following  passage  in  a  paper  on  Dr.  New- 
man's  Grammar  0/  Assent,  which   appeared  in  the 


APPENDIX.  191 

Quarterly  Review  of  last  July,  and  is  relevant  to  the 
matter  on  hand.  "  There  are  two  ideas  of  the  Divine 
Being  which  spring  respectively  from  two  sets  of  first 
principles,  —  one  of  which  gathers  around  conscience, 
the  other  around  a  physical  centre.  Tliere  is  the 
idea  oi'  llim  as  a  moral  governor  and  judge,  ex- 
pressed in  the  majestic  language  of  inspiration, 
which  proclaims  the  '  High  and  lofty  one  that  inhab- 
iteth  eternity,  whose  name  is  Holy ;  keeping  mercy 
for  thousands,  forgiving  iniquity,  transgression,  and 
sin,  and  that  will  by  no  means  clear  the  guilty.'  And 
there  is  another  idea  of  Him  as  the  supreme  mundane 
being,  the  impersonation  of  the  causes  which  are  at 
work  in  the  development  and  completion  of  the  vis- 
ible world ;  who  looks  —  we  cannot  say  from  heaven 
—  with  calm  satisfaction  upon  the  successful  expan> 
sion  of  the  original  seed  which  commenced  the  for- 
mation of  the  vast  material  organism,  — the  universal 
spectator  of  the  fabric  of  nature,  the  groAvth  of  art, 
and  the  progress  of  civilization.  These  two  ideas  of 
the  Deity  must  make  all  the  difference  in  the  aspect 
in  which  a  revelation  presents  itself  to  us  ;  the  former 
will  recommend  such  a  revelation  as  that  in  the  Old 
and  New  Testament  to  us;  the  latter  will  create  a 
whole  foundation  of  thought  in  prehminary  conflict 
with  it." 

This  passage  seems  to  represent  truly  the  two  fun- 
damental tendencies  of  thought  on  this  subject,  which 
are  seen  abundantly  exempUfied  in  the  present  time. 
The  scientific  unbeUef  to  which  the  Spectator  alludes 
does  not  perhaps  get  so  far  as  to  assert  a  "  Supremo 
Mundane  Being,"  but  it  is  along  this  line  of  thought 
that  it  travels,  and  this  is  what  it  would  assert  if  it 
cared  or  ventured  to  assert  anything.     The  contest 


192  APPENDIX. 

between  these  two  tendencies  is  a  radical  and  irrec- 
oncilable one,  —  no  compromise  is  possible.  And  I 
cannot  imagine  how  any  one  who  has  once  got  into 
the  purely  physical  way  of  conceiving  the  first  origin 
of  things  can  pass  out  of  it  into  the  moral  and  spir- 
itual conception,  except  by  a  radical  change  in  his 
whole  mode  of  thought,  an  inward  awakening  which 
shall  make  him  know  and  feel  experimentally  the 
need  of  a  spiritual  and  moral  Being  on  whom  his  own 
being  can  repose,  as  it  never  can  on  any  physical 
centre. 

Once  more  the  old  truth  must  be  asserted  that  if 
we  are  to  reach  God  at  all,  in  any  vital  way,  we  must 
begin  from  the  centre  of  conscience  and  the  truths  it 
contains,  —  from  that  in  us  which  is  highest  and  best, 
which  highest  and  best,  feeble  though  it  be,  is,  we 
believe,  the  truest  image  we  have  of  His  real  nature. 
This,  in  the  religious  region,  is  the  centre  of  all  light 
and  heat.  The  moral  and  spiritual  is  primary  and 
supreme.  But  it  has  always  been  felt  that,  start- 
ing from  this  centre,  it  is  the  function  and  duty  of 
thought  to  radiate  out,  till  it  embraces  and  vitalizes 
all  that  is  known  and  that  exists.  And  now,  more 
than  ever,  there  is  an  urgent  demand  that  thought 
should  do  this,  —  that  the  bearing  of  the  moral  on 
the  physical  order  should  be  more  closely  pondered, 
—  that,  if  it  might  be,  the  point  should  be  described, 
at  which  the  Supreme  will  touches  and  moves  the 
fundamental  forces  which  make  up  tlie  physical  uni- 
verse. In  this  direction  there  lie  whole  worlds  of 
undiscovered  country,  more  important  and  interesting 
than  any  which  philosophy  and  science  have  yet  re- 
claimed. But  this  conquest  will  not  be  achieved  by 
any  movement  of  thought  which  begins  by  denying 


APPENDIX.  193 

or  throwing  into  the  background  those  spiritual  prin 
ciples  which  are  the  most  deeply  rooted,  and  the  most 
enduring,  of  any  that  are  in  man. 


Note  yi.  —  Page  122. 

This  thought,  which  has  been  often  urged,  and 
in  many  forms,  is  put  very  forcibly  by  the  Rev.  J. 
Llewelyn  Davies  in  the  preface  to  his  book  of  ser- 
mons entitled  The  Gospel  and  Modern  Life. 

It  has  since  the  publication  of  these  sermons  been 
elaborately  drawn  out  by  Dr.  Newman  with  his  pe- 
culiar power,  and  forms  a  leading  portion  of  the  argu- 
ment in  his  Grammar  of  Assent. 

The  following  quotation  is  from  Mr.  Davies's  pref- 
ace :  — 

"  The  arguments  by  which  Christians  of  the  firm- 
est faith  are  and  have  been  always  most  powerfully 
moved,  are  not  such  as  it  is  easy  to  lay  out  in  contro- 
versy, or  such  as  can  be  conveniently  weighed  and 
measured  by  logical  instruments.  .  .  .  Christians  are 
continually  tempted  to  do  what  all  controversy  solic- 
its them  to  do,  namely,  to  argue  as  if  their  business 
was  to  establish,  in  the  light  of  the  understanding, 
certain  conclusions  to  which  every  rational  person 
must  assent.  But  this  is  to  put  the  main  point,  the 
attractive  action  of  God  Himself,  out  of  the  question. 
If  the  end  of  God  be  what  we  hold  it  to  be,  to  bring 
human  souls  to  Himself,  then  the  means  He  actually 
employs  must  be  living  and  spiritual.  They  are  likely 
to  be  infinitely  various  and  subtle,  but  they  will  deal 
principally  with  the  conscience  and  the  affections. 

'^jrod  is    likely  —  nay,  is  certain — to  manifest  Him 
13 


194  APPENDIX, 

self  more  and  more  in  proportion  to  faith  and  love. 
Christian  appeals  belong  naturally  to  a  region  tliat 
may  be  called  mystical,  or  may  be  otherwise  described 
as  personal  and  spiritual.  The  experience  of  the 
inner  life,  rightly  understood  and  tested,  is  the  best 
evidence  that  can  be  adduced.  Words  which  one 
man  can  say  out  of  his  heart  may  strongly  move  an- 
other man.  If  we  will  not  acknowledge  evidence  of 
this  kind,  the  evidence  does  not  perish  or  lose  its 
power,  but  we  are  simply  remaining  on  the  outside  of 
the  question. 

"  No  Christian  need  be  ashamed  of  trying  to  rise 
into  the  sphere  of  those  motives,  and  to  submit  to  the 
government  of  those  influences  which  have  produced 
all  that  is  best  in  Christendom.  But  the  truth  is 
that  no  one,  Christian  or  non-Christian,  can  become 
serious  and  think  of  what  he  himself  lives  by  and  for, 
without  appealing  to  considerations  which  may  incur 
the  taunt  of  being  personal  and  mystical." 


Note  Vn.  — Page  139. 


"  Whex,  then,  even  an  unlearned  person  thus 
trained,  —  from  his  own  heart,  from  the  action  of 
his  mind  upon  itself,  from  struggles  with  self,  from 
an  attempt  to  follow  those  impulses  of  his  own 
nature  which  he  feels  to  be  highest  and  noblest, 
fi-om  a  vivid  natural  perception  (natural,  though 
cherished  and  strengthened  by  prayer ;  natural, 
though  unfolded  and  diversified  by  practice ;  nat- 
ural, though  of  that  new  and  second  natm'e  which 
God  the  Holy  Ghost  gives),  from  an  innate,  though 
pupernatural  perception  of  the  great  vision  of  truth 


APPENDIX.  195 

which  is  external  to  him  (a  perception  of  it,  not  in- 
deed in  its  fullness,  but  in  glimpses,  and  by  fits  and 
seasons,  and  in  its  persuasive  influences,  and  through 
a  courageous  following  on  after  it,  as  a  man  in  the 
dark  might  follow  after  some  dim  and  distant  light), 
—  I  say,  when  a  person  thus  trained  from  his  own 
heart,  reads  the  declarations  and  promises  of  the 
Gospel,  are  we  to  be  told  that  he  believes  in  them 
merely  because  he  has  been  bid  believe  in  them? 
Do  we  not  see  that  he  has  something  in  his  own 
breast  which  bears  a  confirming  testimony  to  their 
truth  ?  He  reads  that  the  heart  is  *  deceitful  above 
all  things  and  desperately  wicked,'  and  that  he  in- 
herits an  evil  nature  from  Adam,  and  that  he  is  still 
under  its  power,  except  so  far  as  he  has  been  re- 
newed. Here  is  a  mystery;  but  his  own  actual 
and  too  bitter  experience  bears  witness  to  the  truth 
of  the  declaration ;  he  feels  the  mystery  of  iniquity 
within  him.  He  reads  that  '  without  holiness  no 
man  shall  see  the  Lord  ; '  and  his  own  love  of  what 
is  true  and  lovely  and  pure  approves  and  embraces 
the  doctrine  as  coming  from  God.  He  reads  that 
God  is  angry  at  sin,  and  will  punish  the  sinner,  and 
that  it  is  a  hard  matter,  nay,  an  impossibility,  for  us 
to  appease  His  wrath.  Here,  again,  is  a  mystery; 
but  here,  too,  his  conscience  anticipates  the  mystery, 
and  convicts  him  ;  his  mouth  is  stopped.  And  when 
he  goes  on  to  read  that  the  Son  of  God  has  Himself 
?ome  into  the  world  in  our  flesh,  and  died  upon  the 
Cross  for  us,  does  he  not,  amid  the  awful  mysterious- 
ness  of  the  doctrine,  find  those  words  fulfilled  in  him 
which  that  gracious  Saviour  uttered  :  '  And  I,  if  I  be 
lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  me  ? ' 
He  cannot  choose  but  believe  in  Him.     He  says,  '  C 


196  APPENDIX. 

Lord,  Thou  art  stronger  than  I,  and  hast  prevailed.*  ** 
—  Dr.  Newman's  ParocJiial  and  Plain  Sermons  (Ed. 
1868),  vol.  viii.  pp.  117-119. 


Note  Vm.  — Page  165. 

"  We  are  not  to  be  impatient  of  mystery  —  which 
encompasses  us  on  all  sides.  Our  God  gives  us  light, 
and  we  are  to  walk  in  it  and  rejoice  in  it ;  but  this 
light  seems  to  have  ever  beyond  it  a  region  of  dark- 
ness. The  light  is  not  on  that  account  less  truly 
light,  and  to  be  trusted  in  as  light.  To  permit  dark- 
ness to  bring  light  into  question  —  to  feel  sure  of 
nothing  because  we  cannot  know  all  things  —  is  in 
truth  to  do  violence  to  the  constitution  of  our  being, 
to  which  if  we  are  faithful,  we  shall  know  light  to 
be  really  light,  whatever  outer  circle  of  darkness 
may  make  itself  felt  by  us.  Let  us  thankfully  rejoice 
in  the  light  and  reverently  submit  to  the  darkness. 
And  let  us  welcome  that  gradual  widening  of  the 
region  of  light,  of  which  we  have  experience,  the 
retiring  of  the  circle  of  encompassing  darkness. 
How  far  remaining  darkness  may  yet  give  place  to 
light  now  or  hereafter  in  the  endless  eternity  before 
us  we  know  not.  In  the  mean  time  we  honor  the 
light  by  obeying  it,  and  in  so  doing  honor  God, 
while  we  honor  Him  also  by  a  right  aspect  of  our 
minds  towards  the  darkness,  accepting  our  limits  in 
the  faith  of  the  wise  love  which  appoints  them.  For 
if  we  are  giving  God  glory  in  what  He  gives  us  to 
know,  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  give  Him  the  further 
glory  of  being  peaceful  and  at  rest  concerning  the 


APPENDIX.  197 

darkness  which  remains  ;  not  doubting  that  what  we 
know  not  must  be  in  harmony  with  what  we  know  ; 
and  would  be  seen  by  us  to  be  so,  if  God  saw  it 
good  that  the  remaining  darkness  sliould  altogether 
pass  away  :  if  indeed  it  is  possible  in  the  nature  of 
things  that  it  should  pass  away.  For  we  can  believe 
that  much  is  embraced  in  the  divine  consciousness 
and  in  the  relation  of  the  creature  to  God,  which  it 
may  be  incompatible  with  creature  limits  that  we 
should  know.  Yet  on  the  other  hand  that  is  a  large 
word,  '  Then  shall  we  know  even  as  we  also  are 
known.'  "  —  Christ  the  Bread  of  Life,  by  John  M'Leod 
Campbell,  D.  D.  (Second  Edition),  pp.  157,  158. 


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